Alone
by RemedyChill
Summary: And you think you've got problems? Try Lucas Logan's life - Son of Rogue and Wolverine - as he deals with his new job, kinky room-mates, insane girlfriends, time travel, and coming soon - A knock down, drag out with Daddy Dearest! Just try it.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I don't own any of marvels characters. The insane Wolverine who appears in chapter seven was based on a similar character in the story Asylum by Lateo of Lateo's Link Lair.  
  
Lucas is my own creation.  
  
Enjoy. ----------  
Chapter One: Lockjaw's Narrative  
  
Once upon a time in the multiverse I was born. A rare occurrence to be sure, since most things that happen in a multiverse happen repeatedly, and as I said, I was born once upon a time in the multiverse.  
  
Many other people exist as I do, alone and in infinite company. Rachael Summers, the nomad known as Phoenix, being the most well-known. Rachael Summers who traveled the dimensions in search of self and purpose and then started the mystery school who raised Cable who felled Apocalypse.  
  
She did something with her uniqueness. I can respect that. I feel the need to do something with my uniqueness, or I did. Perhaps I've found it.  
  
Forgive me, where are my manners? I was born to the name Lucas, although it has been years now since I had heard it. Like so many mutants I have taken an alias out of self-defense. Most who know me know me as Lock-Jaw.  
  
While almost no one in any of the worlds of the multiverse knows me (save my own world of course) it would seem that everyone knows my parents. Even though I do not, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  
  
My mother's name is Marie. Although she keeps it like a secret in some worlds. She is also known as Rogue.  
  
In my world, a man named Magneto abducted my mother before I was born. He took her to a Statue that overlooked a great city, intent on an experiment doomed to failure. In many worlds he succeeded in causing calamities of catastrophic proportions. In many more the X-Men defeated him. In three worlds he killed my mother.  
  
In my world he came quite close.  
  
Instead he made her crazy. The torment of the man set itself to rage in her mind and summoning his Magnetic abilities she took flight on instinct for what she thought of as a safe port in the storm. She rose high in to the atmosphere as the X-Jet pursued her after having subdued Magneto.  
  
There was no where to land an SR71 Blackbird in The Savage Land.  
  
My 'uncle' Scott liked to tell me this story. This was his favorite part.  
  
"So I gave the order to turn around." He would begin. "I was about to order Jean and Storm to begin an aerial search when, your Dad, Just opened the door and stepped out. Just stepped out of the plane!"  
  
At that point Uncle Scott would slap his knee. Then he would begin to tear up. And on the bad days he would tell me how you never appreciate people correctly until you've had the time to savor them.  
  
Uncle Scott didn't really like my father. But he made a point of enjoying every time I reminded him of my dad. Uncle Scott is a complicated man. Although most think he is his poker face. He's not.  
  
My father's name was Logan. Also known as Wolverine.  
  
His mutant ability was that of healing. My mother's ability was that of energy absorption. So strong was her power that no one ever though she could touch another person. So strong were my fathers healing abilities that once he had experienced the effects of my mother's mutation a few times he became immune.  
  
My parents returned from the Savage Land as a couple. Many months later Sabertooth re-emerged from hiding. He attacked my mother in a parking lot, intent on destroying my father through her.  
  
But she held him off with the lingering magnetic ability she retained along with Magneto's lingering madness. Held him off for six minutes.  
  
Six minutes. Long enough for the Professor to sense the attack, to dispatch Logan, Scott and eventually Storm to her aid. Long enough for Uncle Scott to lose one eye to Sabertooth's left thumb. Long enough for my father to loose his life. Six minutes. Long enough to burn the last of Magneto's power out of my mother's mind. Time enough to get Storm to electrocute Sabertooth with two bolts of lightning. Six minutes. Beginning to end.  
  
And in the end; it was Uncle Scott who stepped up as Sabertooth began to rise. As he began to reach for my mother again as she held my father's corpse. And it was Uncle Scott, who used his one good eye, despite the pain of the crushed one, and put Sabertooth down for good.  
  
Uncle Scott doesn't tell this story. Not ever. Uncle Scott never killed another man. Not before, and not after. I respect that. I respect that Uncle Scott knows that it isn't necessary to kill, except when it is. I admire that he knew the difference.  
  
I've seen the home movies of my mother and father, living at the Xavier Institute. They were happy. Really happy. But the mother I knew wasn't the girl in those movies. They all said she changed when they lost my father. She stopped talking to people shortly after I was born. And she still doesn't speak. She simply smiles, sadly, and looks away. Or, more often with myself, she will brush my hair away from my face and breathe in slowly as though that breath might rewind life and find her on Xavier's lawn, touching my father, beneath happier skies.  
  
In my late teens a man named Genesis who thought he was heir to the destiny of Apocalypse captured me. He was a madman who thought I would be a horseman in his dark army. He had stolen my father's adamantium skeleton from the laboratory of Hank McCoy who was studying the metal.  
  
I was surgically invaded and the metal was bonded to my skeleton. A series of mental adjustments were implanted as well. None of them took. Later Hank would suggest I had inherited the immunity that my father developed to counter the touch of my mother. That this immunity also fought off the mental damage that was possible through that contact.  
  
And so I am heir to my father's legacy in more ways than one.  
  
My own healing factor allowed me to survive the adamantium bonding process. Although not without the torment of having experienced it. And as I emerged from the bonding chamber, to find Genesis and his thugs awaiting a horseman of death, I dared to use my other power for the first time since childhood.  
  
For as much as I am my father's son, I am my mother as well.  
  
I reached out with my psychic senses and felt their mutant abilities and their minds. And in this touch, I drained them.  
  
They fell about me unconscious. I absorbed their minds and memories, but not as my mother did, wholeheartedly, instead, I seem to experience memories at a distance. But not power. Power I feel quite wholeheartedly indeed.  
  
I drew the powers out of the unconscious mutants that lay at my feet and I drew them in to myself. It was a gamble to be sure. When I was young I had absorbed the powers of a dying friend. My lack of control over his power resulted in my own physical mutation along the same lines as my 'father' did in a neighboring dimension when Magneto removed his adamantium.  
  
But now I too suffered from adamantium poisoning. I had gambled that this would be enough to stop my foreword mutation and allow me to channel that extra power in to healing instead.  
  
I was right. Mostly.  
  
I also developed quite a catalog of abilities in the years since this transpired. Although none of them as strong as when they were wielded by the original owners. And only once did I ever feel the psychological impact that my mother knew one thousand fold. It was when I took the powers and abilities of the mutant known as Stryfe. For just an instant his mind clawed at mine from across the distance and was trying to get in to my head and make himself at home.  
  
After just a few minutes he faded too, all his memories and emotions safely locked back in his own troubled head. I often wonder what my enemies think when they awake, find me gone and their powers mysteriously absent.  
  
No one ever comes back to face me. None of them. Of course, they probably run in different circles after the fact.  
  
And now you know something of me; so on with the rest of the story. 


	2. Alone Ch2 Jubilee's Adventure

Chapter Two: Jubilee's Adventure  
  
Jubilee woke as she always did, thrilled to be an X-man, "Although" she would often think "X-Person is a better description."  
  
It was a golden age for X-Men in her dimension. Sure Sentinels attack mall rats for no reason and most everyone dresses in brightly colored spandex, but what is life without it's surprises? After all, Rogue and Gambit seem to have found true love. Scott and Jean will probably be married in a year or less, and Beast didn't seem to mind at all when he was put on trial for his part in destroying the records at the bureau for mutant affairs. And Wolvie would be back today!  
  
Jubilee strut proudly down the hall, wrapped in a bathrobe, and directly in to the bathroom. The door locked with a definite 'click'.  
  
Gambit sat bolt upright in bed. "Damn." he thought "Petite beat me to it." He beat his pillow twice with his fist and settled down to try and sleep. It would now be a good forty minutes until he could use the bathroom just down the hall. "Need to gets that girl her own place." He thought as he began to drift off again.  
  
Suddenly there was a crash from the bathroom that sent Gambit flying out of his bed and toward the hall. He threw open the door as he tried to call out "Pet..." but that was all the further he managed to get before he was met with the business end of an XSE issue side arm.  
  
"Die traitor." The man said, his dark eyes flashing and his nostrils flaring. He pulled the trigger.  
  
The orange flash was rimmed in purple. It flared each of the three times Bishop pulled the trigger. The first blew Gambit back in to his room but not off his feet. The second went strait through his heart. He reached out desperately for something to touch, to charge, to fight back with, but nothing came to his aid. The third shot struck with the hollow sounding sizzle that let Bishop know that Remy LeBeau, traitor of the x-men, was dead.  
  
Bishop could feel the force of minds searching for his. So many telepaths, searching for answers. But he shut them out. A man holding his glasses blitzed out of a side room. Cyclops Bishop realized. But he was too late. Bishop keyed a sequence of his temporal displacement bracelet and vanished before his eyes.  
  
"Gambit! Gambit!" He called, sprinting down the hall, he caught himself and stopped short. There was no point in hurrying for Remy any more.  
  
The house was off and odd that day. And it wasn't until the next day that people began comparing notes and looking for Jubilee.  
  
Bishop however knew immediately. As soon as he keyed in the sequence and was teleported back to the future. The lab had changed.  
  
People were present, but not the XSE patriots he expected, instead they were incomplete, and mentally lacking. They moved with great precision and ease. They lined up along either side of him, as if directing or shepherding him toward the door.  
  
No longer did the lab open in to a small cramped hallway. Instead it opened on to a metal walkway that hung over a three story marble room adorned with a central throne. Blue and Gold banners hang alternated with black and red draperies along the walls. And there upon the throne sat Professor Xavier, or his living corpse anyway.  
  
Twisted and deflated, undernourished and dying, the form of Professor Xavier sat like a discarded puppet on a toy throne.  
  
"Xavier" Bishop said aloud, the whisper filling the great room as though it had never known sound.  
  
Suddenly a door opened and a line of robed men and women filtered in to the room. Their eyes glazed and empty, they stopped in unison and opened their mouths. No one spoke. A resonance sounded deep inside their bodies and the sound formed words as it continued.  
  
"Bishop the Anomaly, you are hereby found guilty of non-inclusion with the great and holy lord Onslaught. The sentence is death."  
  
And Bishop was suddenly assaulted with a devastating telekinetic wave. It tore him apart.  
  
Jubilee woke up. She woke up as she did every morning of the six years she had been missing from the mansion. She woke up running for her life. Her once latent telepathic skills are not quite developed and offensive. People believe what she wants them to. Act as she wants them too, but it only goes so far.  
  
Because behind every mind on the planet is the Mind of Onslaught. Born of Magneto's rage and Xavier's power, the Onslaught hit the world unaware and went about collapsing under the strain. Until in a last ditch effort, the Onslaught consciousness bonded with that of the Prime Sentinel. Now this techno-mutation keeps the people of this world subservient to the needs of the great master Onslaught who needs nothing but the most basic of care.  
  
When Jubilee was temporally displaced by Bishops time jump she arrived almost six years prior to Bishop's departure. The lab was there and run by XSE people who welcomed a woman of legend. They called her an omen of good will in the battle against the sentinels. She was caught eventually and tattooed over her left eye. And while in prison time began to rewrite around her. No one else noticed when people began to disappear, when buildings changed location and configuration, and when lastly, there was no one left who was not 'zombified'.  
  
No one except Jubilee, who grew more and more powerful as the mutant population of the world began to dwindle. It was as though all the mutant potential of her world was trying to focus itself through the few remaining potential canidates.  
  
It both disturbed and delighted her.  
  
Finally Jubilee had grown in to the kind of woman she had idolized in her past. She could fill out a costume like she remembered Jean and Rogue doing. And she bit back the tears that there was no one left to see it. Her mind recoiled from the thoughts that wished to come. She wanted to think of Wolverine, of Cyclops, or of Trevor of the XSE. The men of her past and her imagination.  
  
The fantasy threatened again; access to a time machine. Surely, after all she's been through, she could have any of them at all if only she could reach them, explain herself.  
  
And she banished the thoughts from her mind. She wondered how normal it was to think about the past like this, then she winced. There was no such thing as normal. Not anymore.  
  
The morning had been unusually quiet. The distant automated factories were producing far less billowing gas today as well. The normal patrols of robed half human husks that walked these roads without fail every morning rain or shine, were also, absent.  
  
Jubilee crept along the road searching, cautiously, for any sign of the beast known as Onslaught.  
  
Two hours later Jubilee had given up on any attempts to conceal herself. She walked boldly and daringly towards the hives of technozombies that now occupied her world. It wasn't long before she found the disciples of Onslaught. Most were already dead. A few others comatose and unfathomable.  
  
By that night she had patrolled the entire complex that was once the base of operations for a tyrant who held the world at bay. It was now a kingdom of corpses.  
  
In one room she found an ancient and decrepit skeleton that reminded her of Professor Xavier. "Couldn't be." she thought "He wouldn't have allowed this."  
  
And there before the corpse on the throne she found the bloody remnants of a man, swatted like a gnat. A man who wore the mark of the XSE.  
  
There was no way for her to know that Onslaught had been dying. That he had been turning over more and more control to the prime sentinel. No way of knowing that Onslaught had assumed Jubilee long dead. That it assumed as it faced Bishop that he was the last bit of resistance it need ever face.  
  
She, and Onslaught, had no way of knowing that once the threat was eliminated the prime sentinel would shut down the entire extermination program. A last line of code from the ancient and bigoted humans who built the machine. No way to know that it would consider the people it possessed as expendable and unreliable parts of a mechanism that had outlived it's usefulness.  
  
And so with Bishops Death, Jubilation Lee was finally and truly, alone. 


	3. Alone Ch3 The Last Day

Chapter Three: Brother Nicholas's last day  
  
Thick fog and torches between the trees. Men shout and plod through the night. But not Brother Nicholas.  
  
Brother Nicholas the Brave. Brother Nicholas the Inquisitive. Brother Nicholas the Cursed.  
  
And the noise repeated again. BAMF, Bamf, bamf...  
  
The villagers surged foreword but to no avail. A demons eyes can see better in the dark. A demon is one with the night. But in the demons path the dogs could smell him, and every time they would, they would turn away and try to balk.  
  
But the mob surged on and the dogs would loose their inhibitions to the will of the crowd until that scent was upon them, a smell like the fires of hell below.  
  
And the occasional three towed footprint left in the mud or tracked on to the surrounding trees at odd angles always managed to inspire a terror and dread in the heart of the mob.  
  
Soon the noise had slowed in to the great distance where occasionally a pfft, pfft, pfft... could be heard if one held ones breath. And the crowd had began its trek back to town after realizing that its quarry had escaped in to the night.  
  
But in the mind of Brother Nicholas only one phrase repeated itself. It was the voice of Brother Aldolpho who had cared for Nicholas and kept him well, raised him in secret and taught him of the world. Aldolpho.  
  
Aldolpho who told him not to go to town. Who told him not to risk it. Who got so mad when he was going anyway. Aldolpho, who lost his temper. Who said not to return if anyone saw him in town.  
  
Aldolpho, a man in tears for the lost temper that lost him a son.  
  
In many realities this decision prompted Kurt Wagner, The Nightcrawler, to reconsider his life. In most realities he went on to be an X-Man and then to lead the British eXcalibur. In this reality however, and this reality alone, Kurt ran for his life that night and did not return to the monastery.  
  
In this reality Kurt broke down. And became, in his mind, all those things he had so long been called, all those things he had called himself and all those things he had been afraid he would become if form dictated content.  
  
Because Kurt was, in his own mind, a demon.  
  
He lived a much smaller life, traveling Europe quietly by night with a few trusted, well paid for, attendants.  
  
At first he would steal from anyone, then only from the rich, and finally, only from the Evil. He would steal from the most corrupt and vile of people. Wipe them out financially, scare them horribly and torment them relentlessly until he destroyed them financially and mentally beyond the point of continuing on.  
  
It was no challenge to destroy the good people anymore, no challenge in destroying anyone but the most evil of men. An observation made only after discovering that cooperation with evil men leads to complacency and weakness.  
  
And there was nothing that The Nightcrawler despised more than his own weakness.  
  
He despised his need to belong. His longing for the company of others. His desire to be touched. He loathed them all.  
  
Until he found someone just as evil as he was, to share his life with. Her name was Emma Frost.  
  
He found her bloody in the snow, a victim of her own powers, a telepath who was perusing the minds of business men and diplomats at fancy parties and then using that information to profit.  
  
She would later tell a friend that Kurt was the only honest man alive, that they were all evil and at the very least, Kurt properly looked the part.  
  
The two fell madly in love and she adopted his philosophy that goodness can be achieved by exploring the realm of evil and rising above it through power, will and experience.  
  
They destroyed the Hellfire Club. Fought Omega Red to a standstill so the x- men could capture him, and were instrumental in stopping Magneto from constructing his orbital station known as Asteroid M.  
  
There existed a total sense of trust between the two.  
  
Then, last night, Kurt slid up behind Emma and surprised her as she turned around.  
  
"Tell me something my Angel" He said, producing a small velvet box. "Would you like to be married?"  
  
"Oh, Kurt!" She opened the box "Yes, oh, I would." And they embraced.  
  
The knife slid in between his ribs and pierced his heart. Kurt never felt a thing. He fell back and watched in awe as Emma looked lovingly at her ring. "Who do you think the lucky guy will be?" She asked.  
  
Then she laughed and her voice changed. "I won't even get in to the Edipal issues." She shimmered and shifted, her skin darkening to match his.  
  
"Mystique..." Kurt gasped and collapsed, dead.  
  
Mystique shook out her long red hair. She knew she had just a few moments before the real Emma returned.  
  
She set on Kurt with her knife and mauled him. She shimmered twice and took the form of Cable, then ran past the surveillance camera she had so carefully avoided on her way in. 


	4. Alone Ch4 The Exile

Chapter four: The Exile  
  
Sir Charles Xavier sat comfortably before a wall of monitors. Scenes rolled by in an almost random fashion. Hero's one and all, albeit in small ways at times. But how to choose?  
  
Sir Charles sighed. How does one choose a successor when the job is to become the future?  
  
When Sir Charles was chosen it was by the mystic known as Dr. Fate, or an alternate reality version of him. He was chosen by the Keeper before him and so on.  
  
The Keeper lived alone in a space station enclosed in a semipermiable phase attunement field that kept it invisible but existing in all of time and space across the multiverse. The Job of Keeper was to maintain the passage of time throughout the dimensions.  
  
Originally, as the universe began, time was a relatively local phenomena moving at variable speeds that were governed largely by electrical conductivity in the surrounding space.  
  
It was during a war of conquest that the Keepers station was built. A race of Reptilian beings had learned to control time and had accelerated their own development both technologically and evolutionarily. They would have over-run the spiritual planes of existence with their own lizard essence as they passed away from possessing bodies to being of pure energy. Had it not been for the first Keeper.  
  
The first keeper brought the station online and began phasing specific waves of gravity through an interdimentional discriminator, thereby creating a relatively stable passage of time through the overlaying dimensions in the local area. This field keeps the reptilian energy at bay, because as it enters the field it no longer moves in it's own limitless temporal nature but instead it begins aging an decaying within the field.  
  
In this manner, all the alternate realities of the planet Earth were allowed to flower and bloom simultaneously. When one of these realities becomes threatening of the existence of the multiverse as a whole, it is the role of the Keeper to prevent such a thing.  
  
So how to choose a worthy successor?  
  
Sir Charles keyed a few controls and several of the screens winked out. Another few controls and another few screens went blank.  
  
Soon he was left with only three choices. On one screen there was a small, slight woman. Chinese perhaps, wandering alone through a world of corpses. A survivor who knows what it means to loose a world. Sir Charles had never met her in his own world. He thought her and her counterparts rather brash.  
  
The second monitor showed a young man with a catalog of powers. He was a singularity, unique among the multiverse. He wore his hair long. A fact Sir Charles noted with a smirk. The son of Logan.  
  
The third monitor held Emma Frost. A different woman than Sir Charles had known and loved and lost to the Legacy Virus. To be sure, but watching her there, holding her dead, elfin lover.  
  
The desire to save a life, to save all life, can be powerfully motivated by personal loss.  
  
But perhaps not for this Emma Frost. Vengeance may be more her style.  
  
Her monitor winked out as well.  
  
The son of Logan... The words drifted through his mind. Sir Charles had known Logan in his world as well. They had been friends. Rivals for Emma's affections. In the end it was Sir Charles that had won Emma although Logan had remained close to her until the end.  
  
And his decision was made. Logan, no matter which Logan, had produced a singularity. A near physical impossibility in a spectrum of infinite probability. And Sir Charles Xavier respected Logan. It was Logan who taught him that mutants were not all evil. A fact the all too human Xavier needed to learn in order to love Emma Frost, his world's most powerful telepath.  
  
Sir Charles Xavier owed Logan. He owed the singularity too in it's own way. He owed it all his respect. Because a singularity was proof that life in all it's forms was still trying. Sir Charles was a Pseudo-Singularity; A human instead of a mutant, the only one in all of the multiverse. This meant he could travel physically between the worlds as though he were a singularity. If you were to attempt, with this equipment, to send a mutant Charles Xavier in to a world where a mutant Charles Xavier already exists a multitude of calamities may result.  
  
One Xavier may cancel the other out and they would both vanish. One may absorb the mass and energy of the other. And more over, the Xavier's may begin displacing each other, pushing each Xavier in to a neighboring universe until one manages to come across an Xavier-less universe that would accept the displacement. Or they may all flood in to one universe and vanish from across the multiverse spectrum.  
  
Or any combination there of.  
  
Sir Charles hit the processing key and slowly keyed off the first monitor. He kept a strict emotional distance when it came to turning away from the young girl and her empty fields. There are worse things he told himself, although he could personally think of none.  
  
With that, Sir Charles Xavier rose to his feet and braced himself on his wolfs headed cane. Age had taken many things from Xavier but none so precious as his mobility. He walked patiently down the hall at half the speed he did this time last year. A life in the service of life takes its toll.  
  
Xavier stopped in front of the mirror. He pulled himself upright and brushed his long white hair back out of his eyes and smoothed his closely trimmed white beard. 


	5. Alone Ch5 Catastrophe!

Chapter Five: Catastrophe!

Almost as soon as Sir Charles had made his decision the core computer began to record a flux in the Keepers home world. The root dimension was being altered, and thereby altering the sub-dimension that Sir Charles had been chosen from.

In the root directory, a boy known as Legion was traveling back in time intent of executing Magneto before he can become a problem to Legions father Charles Xavier. His trip is bound to failure and will rewrite his dimension and all those attached, creating the horror known as the Age of Apocalypse.

In a few short nanoseconds, as Sir Charles smoothed his beard, he was erased from existence. 

The stations onboard computer scanned for life signs and finding none, it fell back on its most trusted sub-routines. It found the dimensional locator and identifier for the next keeper and began the retrieval process.

The son of Logan and Marie stood in that moment framed in a doorway. For a moment his mother began to rise, a habitual greeting for a man long dead, whom she constantly mistakes him for. Then she sat, in mid rise, and slowly sank back toward the chair.

"Mom." He watched her turn noncommittally toward him. "I wanted to tell you mom. I'm going to travel this summer. I won't be around. But Uncle Scott and Aunt Betsy have promised to look in on you and see if you need anything."

Marie smiled slowly as though the thought of old friends warmed her.

"You know I love you, right Mom?"

Her chin suddenly knotted up and her face contorted. Her eyes glazed with tears that began to roll down her face. She raised her hand halfway to her face as though to wipe them away, and then she simply let it hang there in space in front of her, as though she had forgotten why she was moving it.

And she looked her son in the face, then away, quickly, as a deep sob caught in her throat.

"Shhhh.." He stepped in to the room and fell to his knees beside her. He lowered her hand for her back to her lap and he wiped her tears off her face. "Shhh..." he said again.

And he opened the window.

The soft, cool, breeze seemed to distract her. 

Outside the cabin stood Scott Summers. His adopted nephew came out slowly, closing the door with all the care and tenderness that he felt toward his mother. His saunter was slow. He was composing himself.

"Uncle Scott?" He asked, then he was gone.

Scott Summers whipped his head around twice before he realized he was alone. "Yeah?" He asked out loud to no one in particular.

Inside, Marie was again half raised from her chair, looking out her window. She had seen that man again, that man that looked like Logan but wasn't, he had been standing there, saying things, and then outside. He should have left with Scott. _Always with Scott before he goes away_. Never in all her years of seeing the man had he ever vanished in mid-conversation while she watched through the window. Something tugged at her about the mans powers. _He had other people's powers_. Maybe it was one of the other powers. To vanish at inappropriate moments. But something inside told her that this wasn't the case. The word 'lost' drifted through her mind but refused to be identify what or who was lost. She began to sink back down in to the chair. *_Not lost*_. She hoped. *_Just gone away*_.


	6. Alone Ch6 Burying the Dead

Chapter Six: Burying the Dead with the Harvest Seed

Jubilee sat on the gentle hillside; upwind from the smell of rot and decay that was the result of Onslaughts last victory over mankind.

The sun slid down, shimmering in clear and vibrant colors, against the clouds.

Jubilee sighed softly.

In the morning she would forage for supplies and then begin the long hike to the north. To the North there were mountains where no one had lived. It wouldn't take long once there. Maybe a year. And then nature would have reclaimed the death and stench of this mess around her. Already, animals she had not seen in the last four years were beginning to emerge from the surrounding wilderness. It was as if they knew the threat had passed.

Jubilee leaned back against the soft cool grass. But she could not relax.

She sat up quickly and yelled out loud "I know you're there. I can feel you... watching..." and she began to cry. Knowing all too well that no one was watching her, no matter what she felt.

In an adjacent dimension Emma Frost stood over the polished white casket. Her traditional risqué white outfit now replaced with a more somber soft blue velvet dress.

"The headstone is beautiful." She said out loud to no one and to Kurt. "I thought you should know."

She had allowed herself to spare no expense in the last few days. She had exercised such taste and style that when the components were combined, the over all effect was breathtaking.

Red and black roses lined the sea side burial site. The great stone marker bore small intricate gargoyles on the corners, protecting a central relief of Kurt's face over the front of the stone, which bore his name.

The inscription read simply "May he continue to rise." A fitting tribute for a man who had so often claimed that he had gotten progressively 'better' every day of his life.

"I really loved you Kurt. I still do. You are very easy to miss and to love." She hugged herself to feel the velvet of the dress against her arms. "It's a shame no one else got to know that Kurt. I'm sorry."

And Emma Frost looked up at the vast empty burial site. No one else had come. Not the X-men, nor that Pryde woman who was now running the English arm of the X-men, the eXtremists who Kurt and Emma had so often aided, not a single friend or enemy had come to pay the proper respect to this dark and fallen hero.

A man in a nice suit and dark glasses did eventually arrive with a telegram from Nick Fury of Shield. It expresses his deep regret and sorrow at 'Burt's passing.

Emma wanted to laugh. And Emma wanted to cry.

At the same time, in another world, Scott Summers wanted to look at his wife; Betsy Summers, in her deep Asian eyes. She pulled the psychic field from his mind. He felt it slide out but he waited a moment before opening his eyes. Betsy's telepathic powers were invasive and offensive. Not as subtle as many others, but Scott trusted none of them as he trusted his wife.

"You're right." She said, wringing her hands as though to clean them. "He just vanished." 

Cerebro had detected no other mutants in the area at the time and recorded no mutant activity that could be connected with LockJaw's disappearance.

"You didn't tell me." She said. "You didn't tell me about Rogue. Why did you even bother?"

"She's his mother."

"She's been almost completely unresponsive for two years Scott." Betsy was worried. Scott loved his adopted nephew. He could not have loved him more if he were his own son.

"I would have wanted... I did want..." Scott considered carefully before continuing "I thought she might have seen it. I thought his life, might have been enough to bring her around, if her love for Logan could have..."

Betsy laid her hand on her husband's arm. "I think that if she could love him like you do, then it would have been enough, but she cant Scott. Not for a lack of trying, just for a lack of ability."

Scott breathed in deeply and sighed. "He's tough you know. He's his fathers son."

"He's tough. And he's his father's son. And he's a grown man who can take care of himself." She continued "And he's your son too you know. He moves like you when he fights and he sounds like you when he's being sincere."

Scott was sitting up tall; her words had lifted him from his sulk like a broken marionette, dependent on one string. He looked thin to her now and helpless in a way.

"The truth is Scott, you're always right there with him, even when you think you're not."

With that Betsy left the room so that Scott could finish his thinking on the matter, as she knew he had to. She slipped down the manner stairs and out the back of the great house. She sprinted toward the small cabin on the back property where she knew she could find Rogue. As she closed on the cabin she slipped in to a heavy stealth mode. She was in the room before Rogue knew it.

The psionic blade leapt out of her hand. She clouded and dulled it, so as to avoid any real damage, and she reached in to Rogue's mind.

Suddenly Betsy couldn't move. She was wrapped in a distance. She didn't want to admit something, so she couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't listen and couldn't reply when she had heard. It was Rogues mind, she knew, wrapped up in her own mind.

__

*The man...*

The man?

__

*Logan, but not Logan.*

Yes.

__

*Gone.*

Gone where?

*Gone. Gone away*.

And a searing heat began to cut through Betsy's face. She fell back on to the floor and began to convulse.

She awoke to the metallic taste of blood mixed with the salt of tears that had burnt her eyes. As she rose to her feet she looked to Rogues chair. Rogue was leaned against her precious window and her closed eyes fluttered as she dreamed.

Betsy opened the cabin door and wiped the blood from her nose. It had been a foolish stunt. Probing an unbalanced mind can be dangerous. But now it was time to go. To find Scott. To confess what she had tried. He would make sure. He would see to her. See that there was no permanent damage.

Scott was amazing that way; he possessed the ability to forgive things he would have never allowed. And this was one of those things, easier to apologize for than it was to get permission for.

So Betsy began the long walk back to the mansion, disconnected from her body and unsure of her footing, occasionally wiping away too much blood and threatening to collapse. But inside she glowed. She had done all she could to help.

And back on the Keepers Station:

"I wish Uncle Scott was here." I said for the umpteenth time. "I wanted to travel, but this is ridiculous."

What seemed like a million but might have only been a thousand monitors glowed before me. Each showing a different earth, each focused on a moment when that reality was facing crisis and dividing.

And from what the computer was indicating, several dimensions were being overwritten. It would seem that in a world known as the Age of Apocalypse, the X-men, led by Magneto no less, had obtained a sacred crystal and brought about the end of the AOA. Now the dimensional damage was receding and the monitors were tracing the restoration of the dimensions.

The computers were however registering two mounting problems.

My problem was this: I couldn't get the proper coordinates to register on the monitors. Apparently I had been chosen to maintain this station and all of the multiverse to prevent the destruction of the whole. A task made none too easy by the fact that no matter how I entered the coordinates it seemed to lead me to a group of worlds instead of to just one. They also seemed to be two groups of numbers too long.

While I had been attempting to discover how to view and perhaps aid the evolution of these worlds, the meter attached to the computer was steadily climbing. It was currently at 40 percent. One hundred percent meant that realities were overflowing across each other and in short; I wasn't doing my job.

The computer answers simple questions, like "Aren't there any instructions that come with this job?"

It will tell you that Sir Charles Xavier, the last Keeper of the station, left me detailed instructions on how to maintain and run the timelines.

When asked where these instructions are however, it will also sadly inform you that these instructions were 'undone' in the last temporal reversion. And of course, the computer explains this station will remain unaffected by the restoration of the time-line, because a new keeper was already chosen.

Sir Charles instead will be restored to his home world at the moment he had been recruited. The cumulative experience and knowledge he had accumulated in his years spent here will be 'deposited in his unconscious mind' and 'may exist as something like intuition'. 

So I can't even retrieve him and have the station explained to me. 

Hence the desire to find who was threatening the dimensional stability and beat them soundly until I feel my understanding of dimensional mechanics had increased. And my frustration at my seeming inability to accomplish said task.

"Don't make me hurt you." I told the little red light that despite my warning had begun flashing faster as the meter climbed up to 43 percent.

I was two thirds of the way toward discovering first hand what a conniption fit was when the needle reached 50 percent. It was also at that point that the systems began to activate for themselves and display the dimensional telemetry of the afflicted worlds.

In one world troops were mounting. It was an invasion force. They were preparing an assault on the tiny island nation of Genosha. In this reality the Genoshian government sold the island to Warren Worthington who had turned it in to a refuge for Mutants, Scientists, and anyone who needed time alone or with friends in paradise.

No one ever expected that Bruce Banner would arrive here with his new theories on anti-gravity and accidentally discover interdimentional travel. No one could foresee the Friends of Humanity working through the corrupt African government to fund this mission.

No one can yet see what will happen in the years to come after that technology falls in to 'friendly' hands.

No one but me.

Small red letters spelled out possible actions I could take to remedy the situation. I had at my disposal a device capable of retrieving objects from other dimensions. I could use this to secure Bruce Banners control system for his 'anti-gravity' device.

I could tap in to any dimensions communications and warn them of the coming attack.

Or, it told me lastly; I could use the microwave weapons mounted on the station's exterior. It charges the microwaves to a specific dimensional frequency, takes aim at the earth below, and then it kills any living target.

I recoiled at the thought. What if stealing the device and warning them didn't work? What would I be forced to do?


	7. Alone Ch7 A Brief Reprieve

Chapter Seven: A Brief Reprieve leads toward Disaster  
  
The mountains were wonderful. The air was clean and pure. The view was intoxicating and the water was clean and cold.  
  
Jubilee reveled in it and loathed it. It was not her first choice.  
  
But things were better now than they had been in a while. Or so she thought.  
  
She spun quickly as she heard the stick break behind her. She whipped around. She could see no one but she could hear the running feet.  
  
"I can hear you!" She called out.  
  
And the running stopped.  
  
She followed the trajectory of the sound.  
  
It was heading toward her camp. She tore at a run, her jaw set, toward her humble home. She rounded the boulder and ran right in to a man carrying a bucket of water. The man went down. As he was falling Jubilee could see the white rail fences of a farm behind him. A woman sat on a washtub that had been overturned for that purpose. Two children giggled at her feet, playing a game like marbles with small pebbles. One of the children looked up at her and smiled.  
  
But before the man could finish his fall he began to fade. He wavered in and out of color and negative and then he was gone, as was all trace of this other world.  
  
Jubilee fell back and hit a tree that was so close she must have run through it to get here this quickly. She pulled her hand up to her chest in shock only to discover she was drenched.  
  
"What the?" She wondered.  
  
Meanwhile in a dimension once removed, a mother taps her son and tells him it's not polite to stare when daddy drops his water bucket.  
  
The boy just giggled and looked back to his game.  
  
So why was your shirt wet? She wondered again as she told herself it was all in her head. She wrung the shirt hard again, then unrolled it and pulled it back on. 


	8. Alone Ch8 The Queen of Nothing

Chapter Eight: The queen of nothing

Emma sat back in confusion. She had tracked Cable to a house in the Andes. She spent two hours devising a point of entry and about eighty seconds to get caught and gassed in the most elaborate home security system she had ever seen.

When she came to consciousness again she was alone in a detainment chamber. Nate Gray had been waiting for her.

In this reality Nate Gray had come over from his version of the AOA and been discovered by a Charles Xavier who did not go on to become Onslaught. An Xavier unmarred and unmolested by Magneto's hate.

This Nate Gray was introduced to his counterpart Nathan Summers under friendly conditions, using a phase discriminator to cancel out the psionic interference between the two.

Emma could feel Nate's power. And his ability. He could make her forget. But he had chosen not too.

He took her on a tour of the facility. It was not a haven for murderers and thieves.

It was a medical care center for victims of the Legacy Virus.

The Legacy Virus Vaccine was developed in Cable's bloodstream. His techno-organic infection had begun to process the Legacy Virus and create a Techno-Organic-Legacy Virus. This virus communicated between components of it self on a very specific frequency. Once this frequency was isolated, the techno-legacy virus's days were numbered. 

The infected tissue was then bombarded with isolated frequencies that disrupt the communication between the techno-components. Once this disruption occurred the virus lost it's cohesion and, with the aide of some blood work, was wiped from the body.

When Hank McCoy devised this treatment he had no idea that the organic Legacy virus would be totally controllable by the same process. It took only three days of perfecting the treatment before it began saving lives. In six short weeks a world on the verge of epidemic was brought back from the brink.

Except in one small room, in a testament center in the Andes, reserved for he most trying and complicated cases. In this room, Cable was dying.

His techno-viral infection absorbed the maturation rate along with a few other properties of the Legacy Virus. No longer was his vast psychic power enough to hold his disease at bay.

Emma pulled back from the observation window. Obviously, this Cable was not the same one that had so seemingly killed Kurt. This Cable had not been out of this room in many weeks.

"I'm sorry." She told Nate.

"And I for you." He replied.

They made their way to the front of the converted house before the alarms went off. Suddenly Cable was in Emma's head. *_Quickly, danger, Mystique!*_

And then it ceased. 

She alerted Nate (who was electronically shielded from Cable's psionic frequency) and they made their way through the maze of corridors and personnel.

Until Nate ran strait in to himself. "Duplicate this." He said, his arm outstretched, as though conducting some invisible control.

The other Nate screamed in a register several octaves too high and collapsed.

Cables life signs fluttered. As they did, the overflow indicator on the Keepers station fluctuated as well.

When Cables life signs dropped off the scale, so the surrounding dimensions were threatened with a 90 percent result.

The monitors in the station were fluctuating and shifting rapidly to try to assess the full scale and impact of the event.

The small red letters produced only one possible method of restoration: Restore Cable to life.


	9. Alone Ch9 Strange BedFellows

Chapter Nine: Strange Bed-Fellows

On the station above, Lockjaw initiated a restoration procedure.

The monitor showed Cable in the death throws. The picture began moving slower and slower until it finally stopped. Then it began to move backward.

"Computer" Lucas queried "What's happening?"

"The proper moment of seizure is being determined by reverse progression." It chirped happily.

Soon, Mystique in the guise of Nate Gray stood over Cable, the needle in hand.

Inch by inch she crept backwards and out the door. Then the frame froze again. And the surrounding equipment came to life. Pressure began to regulate as gauges and digital read outs determined details ranging from the curve of space within specific gravity and density to the pattern of Mystique's subtle personal scent as it precedes her down the hall.

And then, when the technologic carnival had reached it's peak, the screen flashed as though someone had taken a picture in that distant room below, and a subtle bell, like that of a five star hotel, accompanied the end of the hypnotic, automated dance of the machinery.

A single, round electronic chip slid down the front of the machine and spit itself out in to a small metal tray with an almost aluminum 'chink'.

"Computer?" Lucas prompted, holding the chip up to examine it closer.

"When the probability token is brought within range of it's situational statistic, limited dimensional differential constructs are formed from residual particles of discriminated linear variants."

"Ah!" Lucas mocked the computer as though that made it all clear and obvious. "So I have to bring this... token, there?"

"If you wish to initiate personal transport to the selected location, please affix the black band to your left wrist and key the red control." The wall whooshed open and revealed five oddly shaped (yet comfortable!) wristbands, each resting on it's own imitation wrist.

Lucas pulled one of the bands from the case and saw it's red indicator come to life. 

"Here we go." He slipped it on, keyed the control and vanished.

"Traditional restructuring of this type is done by depositing the token remotely." The computer supplied out loud to no one in particular.

Lucas was sure it was the world that blinked and not him.

But here he was, watching Mystique leave Cable's room, hearing Cable cry out psychically, and he slipped in to the room.

The token flashed and momentarily blinded him.

He felt something touch his chest, and then he heard her speak.

"I can tell you're not supposed to be here." Mystique's voice smiled. "I know everyone who's supposed to be here."

Something touched his chest again, quickly.

"Why wont you die?" She asked, letting her one hand leap out and pierce his chest again, in the form of a thin steel blade.

This time, as she drew the blade out of his chest it touched his ribs.

"Oh, I've tasted that before!" She laughed wickedly.

Lucas' sight was returning, but he was still at a disadvantage.

"Is that why you're still alive?" She taunted "Did daddy give you a healing factor? Did it make you feel like a big boy?" And the knife thrust in again, only to become tendrils once inside is body. She wrapped herself around his ribs, and stretched herself out, worming her way through his internal organs, and spinning her self like sharpened clock-spring towards Lucas' spinal column.

"Didn't daddy warn you about girls like me?" She wrestled to restrain him "Oh, how could he? I never let him come home, did I?" She lashed out again, with the other hand, attempting to stab in through his neck "Too bad you..."

"Oh, Shut up!" Nate's voice came from behind as she was suddenly torn away from the struggle.

There Lucas saw Nate and Emma. Emma reached out with her mind and seized mystique mentally. Her body went stiff and catatonic before falling, rather directly, down.

"Nathan..." The quivering voice called from the bed.

"Cable." Nate leapt forward.

"Phase variance." Cable choked "The legacy cure could be modified by adjusting the phase variance."

"To what end?" Nate asked, taking Cable's hand.

"To restructure..." he began to cough violently and then ceased. 

His light had gone out. But it would be enough, when local dimensional travelers would arrive here in roughly two years time, and carry the treatment across the spectrum to all manner of worlds where Cable had never contracted the disease.

Lucas keyed the retrieval key on his wristband.

"Oh, no you don't." Emma tackled him and pinned him to the ground. She was summoning all her mental disciplines and abilities. "What are you doing here?" She demanded.

"I live here." He replied almost noncommittally.

And with a glance over her shoulder she was caught flat. She let him up slowly and turned, almost completely away from him to look out the view port.

Below them hung the earth, or more appropriately, the earth's.

"What's wrong with it?" Emma asked.

"Nothing." Lucas supplied "It's the station that we're on. It's shifting along the dimensional spectrum."

"So the view changes along with it? "Emma watched in amazement, as the planet earth below seemed to flare in purple plasma, and shift whole continents and ice caps between flashes.

"Sure." Lucas felt the last of Mystique's damage pull uncomfortably closed. "Computer, activate intruder precaution number seven."


	10. Alone Ch10 Responsibility

Chapter Ten: Responsibility

Jubilee had reached 'that point'. Vaguely she recalled Wolverine speaking briefly about 'that point' but she couldn't recall what he had said.

He had said how guilt could eat you alive. How it can make you insane. How it clouds judgment and how, if a person lived right, unlike him, they could avoid guilt entirely.

Jubilee had taken that to heart. She tried not to hurt other people; she tried to be happy, and hoped to fall in love. But no where in that formula had she acquired the ability to cope with the guilt of living when others did not.

In some worlds, she came to know this guilt in passing as grief, ever assured that life went on and remained worthwhile.

In this world, life ground to a halt for Jubilation Lee. Nothing mattered. All her accomplishments were for her and her alone. And although she wanted one, she couldn't find a dog anywhere.

She could see the others all the time now. All she had to do was adjust her focus and she could see them.

Sometimes she saw people and things she recognized. Other times she did not.

She reached out with her essence and pushed.

Everything flashed in negative, like lightening, and she saw it, the mansion of Charles Xavier.

She saw Scott and Jean and Xavier himself. Then she saw herself. This is what I was waiting for! She told herself and she pushed again with all her might, somehow sure that if she pushed hard enough, when she saw herself there, in the picture, she could make it real.

On the station, the meter jumped to 99 percent for a nanosecond, and then fell to zero again, going completely unnoticed as Jubilee passed out, blood running from her nose, and leeching through her clothes as she lay in a lump on the ground.

Meanwhile, back on The Keepers Station, Lucas was asking the tough questions, like:

"What do you mean I cant send her back?" He demanded of the computer. He considered flexing his hands in to intimidating fists as this often had the effect of getting him exactly what he wanted, although he had never tried it with a computer.

"Subject Frost now constitutes a major threat to temporal continuity on her home world." The computer volunteered.

"Why?" Lucas prodded

"She now possesses an elemental understanding of dimensional mechanics and will attempt to use this knowledge to alter the timeline."

Something suddenly hit him like a thunderbolt. "How will she attempt to alter the timeline?"

"She will attempt to rewrite the murder of a close associate."

"Polite computer" Emma entered the room. "I hope you don't mind, I got tired of the view."

"Stupid view, giving Emma extra-dimensional insight..." Lucas grumbled inaudibly to himself. "No problem" He spoke up. "Just trying to..."  


"To figure out what to do with me hunh?" She smiled at him almost genuinely. "The computers right, all I was thinking about was how to use what I just learned to my own advantage."

"You know I can't return you. Not until you decide not to meddle."

"Hmmm." She smiled sincerely "I may be here a while." She was tracing the contours of the table edge with an idle fingertip. "Can't we find some common ground? Use your technology, find a solution that suits us both?"

Lucas considered for a moment. "Computer, is it possible to circumvent the murder of Emma's... " The word escaped him for a moment "friend? Without harming the time line?"

"Transplantation of Subject Emma and a specially encoded token in to a world where their doubles are no longer viable to existence would result in creation of a branch reality capable of supporting the current scenario."

"That sounds promising." Lucas prompted.

"Does it?" Emma teased. "It's a little hard to tell."

"I tell you what Emma. I'll make you a deal."

She looked at him sideways for a moment, sure in her own mind that this was one of those situations where she was about to get the shaft in all the ways she didn't like. But after a moment she began to relax. And although she knew what a horrible mistake it could be, she began to trust Lucas.

Soon, a deal was reached and the computer began construction of the proper probability token for Emma's needs. The computer began to sweep the spectrum of worlds looking for a viable world to accept both her, and her now dead and avenged lover. The computer had warned them that this process could take up to three months.

And all she would have to do is assist in the daily maintenance of the station until then, and maintain any systems that need attendance while Lucas takes care of a personal task of his own.

That night, they retired to their separate rooms.

Emma could feel Lucas as he dropped off to sleep, and she knew how to stretch out her mind and touch his ever so gently, to keep him asleep. She could feel his powers, the powers of others that he had stolen, and healing factor.

Emma wondered silently what sex with a man who had a healing factor would be like. Would he ever climax? Would it only seem like forever?

She reached out and keyed the door to Lucas' room. It slid open with a whoosh that almost surprised her and almost made her lose her concentration. She reapplied the mental pressure and felt him drop further to sleep. When she was comfortable with the depth of his sleep she approached.

Emma crept over him as she had so many others in her day. She climbed right on top of him and straddled him, smiling. She ran her hands over his hairy broad chest. Now that she was touching him it was almost certain he couldn't wake up if he wanted to. Her influence was so great.

Emma leaned down and took his head in her hands. She pressed her lips to his and tasted him with a kiss. Suddenly she felt him stir and begin to kiss her back. A deep warm flush ran through her body like electricity. She focused all her discipline and eased him back in to the foggy realm of sleep.

Once she was certain that the threat had passed she retreated hastily. *_What was I thinking? _She wondered. _What's wrong with me? I'm about to get everything I want, aren't I?*_

She walked past the chip on the table. She eyed it for a moment silently. If she understood the process correctly, Kurt was encoded on that chip. What would Kurt think if he had seen her, stripped to her panties, straddling the stranger?

__

*Of course*, she thought, *_I wouldn't have done that if Kurt were... *_

And the truth of the reality began to sink in. ...*_Alive*._

Kurt was gone and avenged. Did she have any real right to ask for more?


	11. Alone Ch11 Reality and Fiction

Chapter Eleven: Reality and Fiction

Lucas dove and rolled. The plasma bursts were coming in a steady stream. Obviously this girls anger and madness were funneling through her powers.

The explosive plasma stopped.

"You can't pass in to a universe that an alternate you already inhabits!" He called out. "It's got something to do with bad math." She didn't answer. "You can cancel each other out or displace each other." Still, silence.

"I can help you get to another world safely." He called from behind a rock_. Or you could stay with me. . . _

He shook his head to clear it. "Lee? Are you out there?"

"You'reobviouslythepersonificationofmyownfearoffailure. . ." Jubilee jabbered to herself as she leapt in to sight. "TryingtopreventmefromreclaimingthelifeIdontfeelIdeservebecasueIoutlivedallmyfriends. . ." She continued. "Nicepantsthoughforafigment." And she let loose a blast that would have devastated him had it not been for his inherited telekinetic abilities.

"Butwhywontyoudieorvanishorgobacktowhereveritisyoucamefromlikealltheothersdid?" She jabbered on to herself and shifted her attack to the Earth around him instead, threatening to drop him in a hole and let the mountain fall in on him.

"BECAUSE I'M REAL!" He leapt, dove, and rolled. He pounced her and pinned her hands to the ground over her head. 

"HelookslikeWolverineyummy." She said to herself. "Toobadhe'snotreal." She shook her head, pointed at him with her fingertips alone, and let loose with a blast that knocked him flat on his back and sent him sliding.

"Toobadsosadmadememad." She intoned., walking angrily after him. She hefted her hands, cupped the palms together and leveled them at him. "Whycan'tIeverhallucinateaworkingtvwithcable?" She let loose the blast.

Lucas keyed his wrist trigger for transport. His t.k. shield held around him and diverted her blast. "Don't try crossing the barrier without me. I'll be back." He vanished and her power flared wide through where he had been standing before he disappeared.

"Oradog." She wondered sadly and wandered away, absently kicking at stones.

****

The Next Day on The Keepers Station:

Tell me something Lucas." Emma smiled affectionately.

"If I can." He agreed, preparing the machine for his departure.

"What would you think about making this little arrangement permanent?" She was really sizing him up. "All those other Keepers had to do this alone. And it's really not necessary. The station is large enough to be self sufficient for a whole staff if you wanted."

"What's this really about Em?" He smiled and saw right through her.

She let out a sigh and an exasperated breath. "Maybe just until I'm sure if I want to use my chip or not."

"Second thoughts?" He cocked his head curiously.

"More like recent growth." She admitted almost ashamed.

And Lucas was sobered. He stopped keying in co-ordinates and eyed her as though he were seeing her for the first time. Finally her let out a slow breath and spoke.

"I can't argue with that." He said plainly. "It's a valid point to consider." He nodded twice. "All right." He said finally "Until further notice then."

She smiled and he could feel her relief but something still nagged at her "So long as, I just wanted. . ." She bit her lip. "I'm just not ready for anything more than business right now."

"Friends Emma. You mean friends." He smiled at her coyly. "And that's fine."

"Thank you." She said quickly and she whipped around, out of the room before he could change his mind.

"Just don't go attacking me in my bed when you're half naked and we won't have a problem." He said absently to himself as he returned to the co-ordinate console. "I can only pretend to be asleep for so long." He muttered.

And then he chuckled, at himself and despite himself.

He crossed the room and found Emma standing close by, just outside the room. For a moment he thought she had heard him, but if she had, she covered it well.

"When I get back I want to try to approach her again."

"She almost toasted you last time." Emma smiled. "Is that what you're in to?"

He smiled. "She's quit trying to break the dimensional barrier though. She knows now, I'm not a delusion or a hallucination." He seemed suddenly very sympathetic. "She was alone a long time. It can make you a little crazy. My time here on the station got me talking to myself. On a dead world I might just want to shoot all my delusions too."

He sighed.

"I set the computer to fire if she tries it again before I get back." He admitted. Emma was taken aback. "Just because I wasn't going to be here."

Emma nodded her understanding.

"But as soon as I get back, I'm going to try again." 

"You're sweet on her." Emma smiled. "I should have known you'd like the rough stuff."

Lucas shrugged, smiled, blushed slightly, and keyed his wrist trigger, vanishing in a sparkle of light. 

Emma immediately let out a deep breath and sat down. _He was awake!_


	12. Alone Ch12 A Personal Errand

Chapter Twelve: A Personal Errand

"Mom?"

The voice came through the dark night. 

Marie turned her head to see him and then looked away.

"Mom. I need your help."

She did not reply outside of pulling her shawl tighter around her.

"Mom. There was a mistake. All those years ago."

She was listening.

"Dad was hurt. He's still alive."

Marie's eyes lit like fires. She turned toward her son with a maddening slowness.

"He was blinded. Just hurt. I wanted to take you to him. I want you two to be together Mom."

She was studying him carefully.

"I just have to know Mom." He stiffened "I have to know that you're... Still..." He began to cry. "Still in _there_."

She reached out and touched his face, wiping away his tear as he had wiped away hers when last they met. Her mind pushed through the fog. She knew. Somewhere inside, she knew this mans name. If she could just recall, it would show him, it would prove it, it would change the past. *_Not dead. Not dead. Just hurt. Have to go! *_

__

*Logan!*

"Lu-cas".


	13. Alone Ch13 Ancestral Knowledge

Chapter Thirteen: Ancestral Knowledge

"What now?" Scott wondered. Things were always at their worst when Xavier was out of the mansion. But at the times when Xavier was out of the mansion and things seemed calm, Scott was a total wreck. At least now he had something to focus on.

Storm stopped him in the hall just outside Xavier's study.

"Hold." She said

Scott stopped short. "I need to..." He motioned in an efficient manner to the door behind her.

"You need to stop here and compose yourself." She said quietly. "The man you are about to meet demands as much respect as Xavier. And you've no familiarity with him to ease this situation."

Scott pondered her words. He centered himself mentally and let go of any expectations he might have had.

"Better." She smiled as she stepped aside.

He had the distinct feeling that she had just been picking lint off his lapels in an attempt to make him presentable. He eyed her in mild humor and gratitude as he passed in to the room beyond.

Standing before the desk and facing him was a very old man.

The man's skin was deeply tanned and his hair hung long in a braid down his back. His features looked worn. His eyes alone held a deep fire. Scott thought he knew that fire. He saw it in Xavier's eyes when he spoke the truth. Scott had always fancied it a reflection of the light Xavier saw that so many others did not.

"Good evening sir." Scott began. "I'm sorry if I kept you waiting."

"Waiting is a part of what I do." The man smiled slightly and nodded as he took Scott's outstretched hand and shook it. 

Scott gestured to the man and rather than take the opposite side of the desk as he had intended, he took the other chair that faced the desk, as to sit with his visitor.

"How can I help you?" Scott asked.

"I don't need any help Mr. Summers."

Scott digested this and let it turn to curiosity.

"Do I need help?" Scott ventured.

The man smiled. "I can't say. I 'm only here to do my job. I'm a Storyteller."

And with his audience of one firmly attentive, the Storyteller began.


	14. Alone Ch14 Rogue's New Home

Chapter Fourteen: Rogue's New Home

Lucas stood in the soft drizzle on the back of another Xavier estate. He watched his mother through the small wood frame window. She smiled and laughed. She had come to life again.

Her new husband was much like the old, except that he had spent many years attached to the belief that everyone and everything he knew to be horribly true about his wife was false, or as he has become convinced of late, mistaken.

Everyone knew instinctively to give the cabin a wide birth. It still wasn't truly safe for anyone to approach the happy couple, as Wolverine was finding himself to be quite an over protective husband.

"I knew. I knew you weren't gone Marie. They said it, but I never believed it." He would say and then almost timidly add "I thought they were hiding you from me." And then he would rub his blindfold almost regretfully.

"Ah honestly don't know how they managed to screw up news as important as that!" She would laugh and tease him.

Lucas felt another mutant ease up on him from behind. He turned politely and saw her.

It was the Sister he had witnessed on his monitors above. He held his finger to his lips and she approached quietly.

"I'm Mary-Ann." She said. 

"Lucas" He replied with a nod, and he motioned toward the cabin. "Look." He gestured through the window.

"I can't believe this." She forgot herself for a moment, staring at her long dead mother, alive and well, with her father.

His mother and her father were holding each other and bathed in the flickering of firelight.

They spoke quietly. Lucas let all the relevant details fly. Marie's madness, the dimensions, how he had searched for many long nights to find just this world. How Hank had orchestrated this for him on just one hours notice.

"Do they know that they're from alternate realities?" She was trying not to seem too hopeful.

He shook his head.

"Opposing realities in this case." He corrected her. "This world and my world branched directly off the outcome of that one night, all those years ago. Everything they shared up until that night was virtually identical. Everything after... Well, I think most of what followed was a waste on both counts."

Mary Ann nodded her silent agreement.

Then something occurred to her. "Why did you bring her here?"

Lucas was shocked. "I wanted..." and at a loss for words.

"No, not why, but why _here_? Why not bring him to your world?"

Lucas stopped and turned toward his distant relative. 

"Because I never got to know him. He died on me Sis. I lost him. She lost him. My world lost him." He grimaced slightly, and became acutely aware of his own adamantium skeleton. "I couldn't do that to anyone else."

"I never had him in my life before. He thought... He thought I was her. He was..."

"Irrational" Lucas concluded.

"Yeah." She swallowed. "He did it to himself you know. His eyes; Because he saw he murdered."

"I know."

A signal light began to flash on the wrist cuff communicator that Lucas had brought with him.

"This means I have to go." He grimaced.

"It's okay. I can take care of this end now." She hugger herself, unsure "Will you be back?"

"In a week or so, like always.." Was his only reply.

And the wind whistled down the chimney, and over the hearth. Logan sat up slightly.

"What is it?" Marie asked, laying her hand on his chest.

"I smelled someone. Someone I smelled before, and someone else too." He breathed in again, deeply. "Marie, honey, did we have a daughter together?"

Rogue was taken aback, her sanity began to cloud and her mind recoiled. They had a son, not a daughter, she was sure of it, and Logan HAD died, he had died, she was sure of that too.

"aaahhh thought it was a son... Logan..." She reached for him although she felt numb.

"That makes some good sense then. I could smell two people outside is all. I think we had twins. A boy and a girl, and I think there was just as much confusion about them as there was about us."

Rogue sat up slowly. Twins? Outside? She stood up and crossed to the door.

"Marie!" Logan called, rising to his feet and reaching wildly for her.

"I'm not leaving Logan. " She opened the door and called out "Hello?"

And one figure wandered out of the light drizzle. It was a graceful and beautiful woman. She glided up to the mother she never knew. "Hi momma. I'm Mary-Ann. Lucas said I should come say hello. He said he'd stop by and see you in a week, like always."

__

Momma... The word rolled around her head several times and then she said it out loud, softly, and hugged her child close.

"Logan, dear, it's Mary-Ann" She smiled brightly "One of the children, come to visit."

"Mary Ann." Logan said, as though agreeing with the name. "Your mother and I were just talking about you. Come in, sit with us here, it's warm near the fire."

And Lucas watched longingly as the small door closed in the distance before keying the recall button on his wrist cuff and vanishing from the world entirely.

At just that same moment, Scott and Jean were encountering Kitty Pryde, on the other side of the mansion.


	15. Alone Ch15 The Oral Tradition of LockJ...

Chapter Fifteen: The Oral Tradition of Lock Jaw

As told by Counting Crow

Many years ago there was another Storyteller who set about unknowingly on a great adventure.

He had climbed to his Power-Place in the mountains after fasting for many days. It was there that he prayed to the Great Spirit and to the Great Mystery beyond. He prayed for a vision of healing, that his nation and the white brothers could come together in understanding.

He sang his song late in to he night and he beat his drum until the whole valley below seemed to glow.

When the glow took on a life of it's own he stopped drumming and rose to his feet. Above him there was a blast of noise and a piercing light. It passed over his head and crashed in to the valley floor below. It left behind the smell of animals, roasting on the fire.

When he had ascended to the ground below he found that it was a man who had fallen from the sky.

He was burnt and still, but his heart beat on and his breath remained steady. 

The man was too heavy to lift on his own, so the Storyteller returned to his village and brought six warriors to draw the man from the earth where he had fallen.

These warriors had seen many battles. They knew what injuries were fatal and which were not. This man was not supposed to be alive. And yet they dug around him and brought him from the earth.

When they lifted him, it seemed as if all his blood has run from his body in to the ground. They wrapped him in buckskin and placed him on the back of their strongest horse.

All six warriors were convinced he was dead by the time they reached the village. The man was brought to the Healer. The Storyteller and the Healer sat with the man for three days and hovered over him with sacred herbs, prayers and medicines.

Then he opened his eyes.

A pain in his face made him sit up and lean forward. His lips curled back and there was a great noise of tearing flesh.

A pair of bright metal fangs had burst through the mans gums above his own. One of the teeth had been broken loose in his head when he fell. He pulled it from his face and with much less noise he retracted the one good tooth.

The Storyteller and the Shaman sat amazed as they saw the man begin to eat almost immediately after retracting the tooth. The Shaman edged in close and lifted the mans lip to see the soft white gum still turning pink as it closed again over the secondary tooth.

At first the man was quiet and confused. And when some suggested that he was perhaps a fool, the warriors would turn angry. They would explain that they had all been hit and beaten so badly as to have become slow and confused. And that to have been hit with the earth itself, and to have been all but dead, was more than enough to confuse even the wisest man.

Then the people were quiet and respectful.

One day, he rose to his feet and emerged in to the daylight, wrapped in his buckskin blanket.

Soon he was taken to the river to bathe and given new clothes to wear. He spoke English, and not the Native Tongue, but when he wished, he could show you the pictures in his mind and he could see the pictures in yours.

The people had many names for him at first, but later he would be known as The Stone Man and finally The Metal Buffalo Man.

He brought many songs and stories, and he made for our people Six Sacred Prophecies. All of which have come to pass. 

One day, his people came for him, led by The Wild Man, who was The Metal Buffalo Man's father.

He asked only one thing of the tribe. That the Storyteller of the tribe come here, today and find One-Eye or The Metal Buffalo Sister, and tell them these things, which I have written down. 

"On a more personal note, on behalf of myself and he tribe, we would like to thank him for the last two of the sacred prophesies. " He smiled with a deep wisdom and grace. "They were stock tips. We're cleaning up." And with that said, he nodded, smiled, and left the building.

Scott wandered out of the mansion, his head spinning slightly from the Storytellers tale. Something was not right. He felt like he was missing pieces. He would have discarded the whole thing if it hadn't been for the adamantium tooth wrapped in the Storyteller's instructions.

He wandered out across the lawn like he used to when he first came to this place.

Soon enough Jean was there at his side. She knew the cue well enough. If Scott was on the lawn, he was wondering about something. Eventually he gave her the tooth and she closed her mind to all distractions.

She saw Genesis crafting the Adamantium in to this form, she saw and felt it tearing out of the boys mouth over and over. Saw him raised by Scott and Betsy! She saw him latch on to people with this tooth and use the contact to drain their powers. Saw him saving whole worlds. Saw him confronting parallel versions of the X-Men in alternate realities. She saw him with his mother, Marie, long dead on this world. Saw him talking to Mary-Ann in a forest. Saw him falling in flames in the cool dark earth.

She jolted out of the vision when the broke the tooth free for the last time and as it flickered away, she saw all the Storytellers who had held it until now, their faces, swirling away in to green and black.

"He's a dimensional... guardian. He's..." She sobered for a minute. "The son of Logan and Marie!" 

"He was talking to Mary Ann, Scott! OUR Mary Ann!" She was amazed.

"The Metal Buffalo's Sis-ter..." Cyclops said knowingly.

The night was falling quickly. A light mist had become a drizzle and Scott and Jean stood, facing each other, unsure once again, exactly what would be expected of them in the near future. They made their way back to the mansion where they were confronted by Kitty Pryde.

The whole mansion was a'buzz with activity. There was a ghost on the property.


	16. Alone Ch16 Emergency!

Chapter Sixteen: Emergency!

"I'm sorry Lucas, the sequence is all-ready armed. I can't stop the countdown. It's targeted the girl."

"How long?" Lucas barked.

It almost threw her off "Ahhh, four minutes until firing sequence is complete."

"Right. I'm heading for the airlock. I'll suit up and manually disrupt the targeting from the outside."

"Have you ever done his before?" Emma was worried now.

"I've seen the schematics." Was all he replied.

At three minutes and counting he entered the airlock. 

At two minutes and ten seconds he exited the station in to space.

At one minute and seventeen seconds, using the magnetic clamps he rounded the outer skin of the station.

And at six seconds he was standing right over the microwave weapon, attempting to attach his magnetic clamps so that he might tear it loose or point it off in to space.

At zero seconds and firing, Lucas, son of Logan, took the blast meant for Jubilee, dead center in the chest.

Have you ever put metal in the microwave?

The microwaves attempt to align the already dense and compact molecules in the metal. This results in discharging energy, much like the electrical discharges that form over tectonic disturbances or earthquakes.

When you've got a metal skeleton, it's best not to force yourself in to a microwave oven. Barring that, it's also best to avoid being blasted in the chest by your own microwave weapons. If you must be blasted in the chest by your own microwave weapon, be sure your magnetic clamps are holding you to the station.

If your clamps weren't attached, it's quite possible that you would be blasted off in to space, plummeting to earth, your body erupting in electric discharging seizures, while you were caught in a cloud of dimensionally unstable microwaves at they attempted to destroy an innocent girl below.

Who knows what might happen to such an person? What fate might befall such an individual? Could anyone truly know?

Anyone, that is, save for Lucas?

In the pristine station, Emma sobbed. She cried for Kurt, she cried for Lucas, and she cried for herself.

After a moment she rose from her knees and looked to the monitor. The girl was staring up, in to the sky, as though she had seen something. She was no longer a threat, according to the meter anyway, and Emma rose on trembling legs. She crossed over to the object retrieval station. 

She turned on the targeting scanner and locked in on Jubilee.

"Hello?" Jubilee called out to the wilderness around her. She was having that feeling again. That someone was watching. "Lucas?" She asked hopefully.

Suddenly the world was jerked away and she felt as though she were spinning in place, soon the dizzyness passed and she was in a large white and black room. As she stood up, a woman's voice called out.

"Do you know what you've DONE?" Emma roared.

For a moment Jubilee took a defensive pose as though the recrimination were destined to be followed by violence. When it wasn't, she let her eyes adjust to the stations interior lighting.

Suddenly she felt the attack. Not a physical one, but a mental one instead. Emma was fierce and angry. Her mental attack stretched Jubilee's mind out for examination. Jubilee had never felt so helpless. She was mentally tied eagle and exposed.

Emma delved in to Jubilee's psyche. Picked over her most personal thoughts, and dissected her motivations.

Lucas. Jubilee realized. _He was dead_. It was him that she had seen, out of dimentiona phase, and falling to earth, dying, to save her.

And her mind convulsed on the thought, throwing off Emma's mental hold and jolting their awareness back to the three dimensional world around them.

"You weren't trying to cross dimensions again?" Emma wanted to be clear.

Jubilee shook her head. She was going to be sick.

"You were just trying to get Lucas' attention?"

She nodded, wrapping her arms around her stomach and rocking back and forth.

"He had offered to take you... to bring you here?" Emma was recalling the shared contact. "But you didn't trust him?" She made the next connection as well. "With your heart." She smiled ruefully. "You didn't trust your _self_" 

Jubilee stopped moving.

"You knew he was true to his word. That's what you were afraid of. Because you lose everything you love."

"Shut up." Jubilee warned.

"So you were afraid, not just of your real feelings, but of the ones you might have too?"

"_Shut up_." She hissed.

And Emma's demeanor changed. She slid down next to Jubilee and wrapped her arms around her. Jubilee held herself resolutely for a moment and then fell to pieces in Emma's arms. 

Waves of torment, horror, and insanity rolled out of the girl, and Emma sat, amid the storm of Jubilee's grief, stroking her hair with her fingers and soothing her slowly with her intimate mental touch.


	17. Alone Ch17 Thanksgiving

Chapter Seventeen: Thanksgiving

Wolverine sat upright and forward in the chair. The bandage wrapped his eyes, but his nose was perked up, to catch the scents in the air.

He could smell the fall leaves outside although in his mind he called this smell the 'fall colors'. There was sweet, cool moisture in the lush grass beneath those leaves, and soon, Wolverine was sure, Thanksgiving would be upon them.

When the smell of roast bird and extravagant food always filled the House of Charles Xavier. Where football and laughter and food would renew the soul in time for winters chill.

But Wolverine needed something more to renew his soul. And he had waited a month, for Xavier's return, to begin the process.

A door shut in the distance and Wolverine straitened, and pulled his wolfs head cane (A gift from Charles) up properly, his hands resting on the large silver head.

A moment later the door opened and Wolverine took in the scent of the oil and the residual fragrances left on the handles on the back of Xavier's chair. He had long since become so accustomed to Xavier's smell that he could smell him on anything in the house.

"Good evening Logan." He said smoothly, wheeling himself around behind his oversized desk. "How are you?"

"I'm good Chuck. Real good." _Good and nervous._

"I've heard that there have been developments while I was gone."

"Yeah. That's why I need to talk to you." Wolverine reached out gently with his hand and pushed the door lightly. It swung closed in an appropriate manner. "I found some things out Professor. Some things that matter to me more than anything before." He advanced on the desk using the cane to guide him. When he found it, he took the chair opposite Xavier.

"You've been real good to me Professor. Better than most anyone I'd wager. Even when I was unreachable, you were there, reaching."

Xavier was stunned. _Such a change in so short a time_.

"And now I need to ask a favor Professor." He could smell the professor's surprise. "I need to go looking for my son."

Xavier didn't speak. Not at first. But after a moment he leaned in forward. "What is it you need Logan?"

"_Eyes_!" He hissed in a tone lower than he had intended.

"Y-e-s." Xavier responded slowly and noncommittally. He leaned back, intent on not responding; "I see."

****

Six Weeks Later

Wolverine's head was swimming. Briefly he wondered if he could get some of this anesthetic for the next Fourth of July weekend.

He could hear them talking about him. _Hurry up!_ They would say. _I want to be right here_. _Mom, you stand here. _And_ How long now?_

Then, all too soon, Hank was unwrapping the bandage. He felt naked without it for just a moment.

And then he blinked. Twice.

And there was Rogue. His Marie. And her smile, still so bright, genuine.

And then to his left, that smile again. Younger this time and less familiar.

"Mary-Ann" he said softly, looking away to Rogue, only to see her nod and confirm it.

And he pulled his girls close, afraid he was dreaming, afraid he was insane, afraid that the moment would end and fade like a dream until it was lost to him. 

__

Lost... The word floated through his mind even as he pulled his head back to see them both, again, together. _He's months overdue, Hank's making arrangements_. . . And it suddenly all felt false; His wife, his purpose, his recovery and his life.

"It's not a dream." He said to Marie who shook her head and bounced up and down in excitement

Scott and Jean stood in the corner, behind Mary-Ann, but removed from the group.

"Marie, Mary-Ann, can I have a moment with Scott and Jean?"

For a moment Mary-Ann hesitated but then left with Marie to wait "Right outside."

"Summers." Wolverine beckoned him forward. "Jean." He swallowed. "Thank you both. So much. Thank you."

And where the words failed him, his actions would speak so much more clearly, as he drew them both close to him, as he had his own family just a moment before.

His emotions flowed through his touch and in to Jean's mind. An unstoppable emotional rush flowed through her as she came to understand that this feeling was Logan's conviction, his understanding, and his appreciation. 

The emotional charge flowed between Jean and Scott through their shared psychic bond, until it was so strong that Scott found himself opening up, and sharing the pain, and insight and the love that resulted from raising Logan's daughter.

In the hall outside, both Marie and Mary-Ann jumped as the door opened. Much to Mary-Ann's delight, her father and her dad were walking together as the best of friends.

The night dissolved in to dinner and exhaustion. Soon however, the moments led in to the night and Logan stood alone, looking out the small cabin window as Marie rose and fell in the gentle pattern of sleep.

The moon was out, although not quite full, and the night was clear.

Only one thing was missing. Only one thing remained.

Wolverine had never met his son. A son lost somewhere out there. Marie spoke well of him; he was kind, smart and strong. Logan never pushed her to talk about him although he longed to hear more. He knew that Rogue was suppressing the paradoxes. He finally understood that the dimensions had diverged and then recombined in some fashion. He understood that paradoxes were like scar tissue, proof of a healed wound. Nothing more.

But Marie was still fragile. Still unsure in theory but not in practice.

__

And that's enough for now and more than I deserve. He would tell himself.

But soon it would be time, time to find his son, time to hold an entire family, time at last to see his whole world. Soon, it would be time to show the world what he had learned about standing by your family. _Soon._


	18. Alone Ch18 Does Not Compute

Chapter Eighteen: Does Not Compute

"I thought you were good with these machines." Emma teased.

"Give me a pc, or even a mac. Make me run Linux if I have to! But really, alien computers with:" Jubilee looked to the screen to make sure she read it right "Temporally reversed linear processed database access" she looked Emma in the eye "And I'm a little out of my league."

Emma smiled good-naturedly. "So no news on why we cant transfer the Keeper's Station voice commands to one of us?"

"I found one thing. But I don't know what these numbers mean." She tapped a few keys and brought up a new screen where she entered the query: How are voice commands transferred?

It brought up a screen that said, "voice commands could not be transferred until" Followed by a long set of grouped numbers. 

"These are dimensional co-ordinates." Emma explained. "They pinpoint..." She processed them for a moment. "Oh, here. That's here." She gestured to the last two number groups "And this is a time reference. It was last..." She worked out the math in her head "Next week."

"Last next week?" Jubilee prodded.

Emma ignored her. "Key the first and last sequences in to the surveillance system." Emma leaned over the small viewer and while pretending to shield it from glare, blocked Jubilee's sight of the image.

The image flared to life, depicting a scene from the station, in the future. An impossible scene so far as Emma was concerned.

"What is it Em?" Jubilee asked.

"Just an empty room." She lied, shrugged and keyed the screen off. "How are the gauges?"

"No problems." Jubilee looked to confirm. 

"Are you hungry?" Emma asked.

"I could eat." J answered.

And Emma turned off the light as she left the room behind Jubilee.

Then Emma waited. Emma hated waiting. But she waited none the less. Soon the temporal co-ordinates would be approaching. _Tomorrow at this time_. Could it really happen_? Is it supposed to happen?_

She was in no way prepared for what she had seen on the monitor.

Every pore on her body wanted to cry out in excitement and possibility. She wanted to...

She wanted to wait. She didn't want to trust in alien technology she didn't really understand. She didn't...

Emma wrapped her arms around herself. She didn't trust herself anymore.

How could that screen have shown what she saw? How could it be?

Emma turned her attention away, to Jubilee. Jubilee. She was resting two rooms away. Sleeping.

Emma remembered sleep, although it had been days since it had come.

Maybe this was it. Maybe she broke herself with worry and did something foolish. Maybe that's how it happened.

She pulled her attention again to Jubilee. Emma closed her eyes and could see Jubilee's dream. She was in a great school, tall as an office building, brushing past people she had known and seen on t.v. in the halls. Everyone was dressed well, except Jubilee, who was still wearing her pink nightgown, although no one noticed. 

Emma saw herself in the dream, surrounded by men. None of whom was Kurt.

Jubilee went to talk to her best friend in the dream world. At first he was too distracted to notice her. Then when he did turn her way and smile, he burst in to flame and fell to dust. The dust got on to Jubilee's pink, fluffy bunny slippers, and everyone in the hall began laughing at her and pointing.

Suddenly something happened. The scene changed. Emma recognized this change. It happened when a person was having a precognitive dream. Suddenly Emma was shunted away as though she were observing the image from a great distance. It was a scene of a door on the station, with a silhouette, and with a rush of sexual release, the image was gone.

Jubilee woke suddenly. And the dream vanished from her mind entirely.

The communication system was signaling an incoming transmission.

"Who even knows we're here?" Jubilee asked as she joined Emma at the console.

"Let's find out." She keyed the control.

The image flickered and flared to life. "Greetings and Salutations to the inhabitants of Keeper One." Hank McCoy smiled "I bring news of Lucas." He smiled.

"Lucas is dead." Emma told him.

"Micro-waved and dropped to earth – yes. Dead, hardly." He straitened his glasses. "We got his note. . ." He began.

"Note?" Emma was hopeful but reserved.

"Ah, my stars, yes. Clever boy. Left it with a Native American tribe who handed it down." He smiled. "You see, he's landed in our past."

"Why your dimention? Do you know?" Emma was suspicious now. She could see Jubilee's interest and her willingness to believe.

"Indeed." Beast suddenly realized that he was being viewed as questionable. "He was recently her on a personal matter. He left this world just before returning home to have his accident. It was the most recent and therefor strongest exposure to a dimentional vibration. Those microwaves struck him like a tuning fork and he began to vibrate with our dimentional constant."

"And he's back in time?" Jubilee chirped up and bobbed in between Emma and the screen.

"Yes." He cocked his head slightly and continued. "The microwaves were calibrated to strike another dimention. This second frequency became the pattern for his temporal displacement. It pushed him back in time instead of in to another dimention."

"I see." Emma replied, ushering Jubilee away from the screen.

"I'm not sure you do." Hank shifted his focus to Emma. "I have his parents here. With our information and your resources I believe they could mount a rescue effort."

Emma paused. "And you would require access to our station." It wasn't a question.

"Under any terms you set down of course." Hank let his sentence trail off. He had expected more enthusiasm.

"I will contact you shortly." Emma told him. "Station out." She killed the comm.

"I don't think we should. . ." Emma was turning slowly on Jubilee. When Jubilee interrupted her with a violent slap across the face.

"We're helping them." She let her eyes burn with her anger. "I'm going with them and you're staying here to watch the station, but so help me – If I have to – I'll come. . ."

But Emma continued despite her, holding her face. "Of course we're going to help them." She snapped. "But we have to be careful you stupid girl. Think of what could happen if this station were in the wrong hands." She was bitter and swelling but not angry. She understood what Jubilee saw here; A chance for redemption. 

And she knew what loyalty she felt too. For the first time in a long while she was truly sure of not only some thing but someone. Not since she had first met her Kurt and explored the depths of evil had she felt such a pull as this; To explore the heavens and rain down blessings upon the strange and troubled.

She wanted to be more like Lucas. Not to possess him or enjoy him as she had so many others. All she wanted was more to emulate. To see him home, as he would have done for her.

"I'm sorry." Jubilee hugged herself "I thought. . ."

"I know." She said softly and let go of her face. It was deep red and still pained her but she ignored it. "I come off like that because I used to be like that." She swallowed. "It's not always easy to change."

Jubilee dropped her eyes and left the room.


	19. Alone Ch19 Ammends

"Did we figure out if it was possible?" Jubilee looked uneasy. She and Emma had been slow to mend their fences since Jubilee had slapped her.

"It was his suit." Emma said coolly. "All the space suits have some sort of inertia dampening system. He would have survived the fall almost unharmed, even without his healing factor, if the suit hadn't been microwaved." And immediately she wished she hadn't said it. 

"I'm sorry." Emma said, dropping her head. "I'm tired."

"Listen, the other day, I shouldn't have. . ." Jubilee began but Emma silenced her.

"It's just some _thing_ that happened." She produced a small, worn and wavering smile. "Karma Maybe." She shrugged. "And it let me see why Lucas cared in the first place." Emma's soft blue eyes carried a heavy gaze. "You're not done living, and a lot of people are."

Jubilee wasn't sure what to say. She had never considered it.

"Just bring him back." Emma said. "You're who I'm counting on. These parents of his. . ." She rubbed her eyes. "They're not the most stable versions of themselves."

"Sounds familiar, like us." Jubilee said, realizing how true it was.

Emma spit out a laugh. She couldn't stop herself. She was punchy and it showed. "Yeah." Emma agreed at last. "It does, but we haven't been institutionalized lately." She chuckled a bit.

"Not that we couldn't have been." Jubilee said.

"Speak for yourself." Emma quipped.

"Please, you're talking to someone who's _seen_ your closet." Jubilee dismissed her. "You've got more leather and chains in there than can possibly be healthy for a single person to own."

Emma laughed, half embarrassed, half-delighted exhibitionist.

"And that teeny, tiny, little, itty-bitty white HARNESS with the suspension rings by the _ass_ and the wrist ties?" Jubilee looked incredulous. "Tell me that ONE PIECE ALONE wouldn't be enough to . . ."

But Emma was laughing too hard. "Okay." She threw up her hands. "Okay." She was slightly red from laughing. "Stop." She inhaled deep, and immediately blushed to a deep red hue.

"Red's your color." Jubilee told her.

"I'll remember that." Emma smiled shyly. "I may need a new wardrobe. The old ones giving me a reputation."

Jubilee stood up. "Sure Em." She smiled "It was the clothes that did it." She chuckled a bit and wandered back out the way she came. But she paused at the door. "When's Hank going to be coming up?"

" I can get him any time now." Emma gestured at the monitor. "He's almost done duct taping himself to his luggage."

Jubilee smiled, nodded twice, and replied "I'll be right downstairs, if you need anything, let me know." She considered her next words. "And I _do_ trust you Emma. Restricting his access and keeping him supervised isn't just a good idea. It is a necessity." She admitted.

"Thank you." Emma said, caught off guard by the sudden compliment.

"Let me know what's happening, once you know." Jubilee looked distant, she obviously didn't like being 'out of the loop'.

"I will." Emma promised, and meant it.


	20. Alone Ch20 Preparing to Ascend

Hank McCoy bounded enthusiastically down the hall. He arrived once again at his now overstuffed bags. After careful consideration he decided not to try to force anything more in to them. He cast a shady glance down the hall. No one was coming. 

He snagged the roll of duct tape off the back of the pantry door and leapt back to his luggage. 

He then took the hopeless mass of wires he carried, and the shiny box they were attached to, and wrapped them once themselves, and then taped the bundle to one of his tweed suitcases.

He eyed the obvious attachment and his luggage. He then lifted and turned the affixed case so that the growth was instead between the cases, and in his mind anyway, ten percent less obvious.

"Hank!" Marie called out so as to startle him. 

Hank jumped and tried to throw the roll of duct tape in to the next room. The loose end of the tape instead caught itself deep in his wrist fur, where it hung unbeknownst to said Beast, as he used that hand to smooth the hair above his ear, while he tried to look innocent. "I was just, waiting."

Marie was momentarily entranced by the ensnared roll of tape, then she came to her senses. "Oh Hank." She said, still fighting off her laughter. "Let me get this. . ."

Hank looked hopeless and helpless upon seeing the tape.

Marie took his great blue paw and turned it over between her own small hands. She held his hair close to the skin, careful not to make contact, and slowly worked the tape loose, very carefully.

"Thank you." His tone was one of humor tinged with embarrassment.

"You really want to get up there, don't you?" She smiled and let go of his hand affectionately. 

Hank looked breathless at the mention of it. "Indeed." He smiled. "Indeed and in fact." He pursed his lips. "The technology needed for such a venture. . ." He shook his head. "There is so much I could learn from even a short duration." He sighed.

"But that woman? Emma Frost?" She ventured.

"She seems quite. . ." He searched for the word "Resolute. About something."

"As Ah understand it, the station belongs to mah Lucas." Rogue waited for him to nod in agreement. "And she's there as his guest, right?"

Hank nodded again.

Marie lit up like a Christmas tree. "Then don't worry about it, shugar." She gave him an affectionate push with her fist. "My Lucas can see inside a person." She explained. "Always could." She hopped up to sit on Xavier's antique entry room table. 

Hank raised his eyebrows. "Is it a Mutation? Telepathy?"

"Just common sense." She smiled "Mostly." She kicked her feet idly. "He's got some telepath in him now." She grinned a bit. "Some t..k. too." 

"Now. . ." Beast thought for a moment. "Oh, right, he's got your powers, and Wolverines healing. . ."

"He's got powers all his own Beast." She shook her head. "His real power is keeping all those other powers in check. Mine, his daddy's, and all those powers he nabbed from all those folks who were just up to no good."

She pursed her lips and smiled.

"You've every right to be proud." Hank smiled.

"I wasn't around much." She shook her head. "He really raised himself. Scott always used to tell me so."

"You don't seem worried about him." Hank realized out loud, questioning.

Rogue laughed out loud, and her eyes shone like glass. "How can I be Hank?" She looked wistful as she searched for the right words. "You can't hurt him Hank. Most folks cant anyhow." She laid her hand on Hank's arm. "And we've got you to handle this for us Hank."

He looked at her. Had he almost believed that she was the Rogue of his world? Had he forgotten the truth? Even for this one moment?

The two of them seemed identical.

Beast suppressed a shudder and fought back a million questions about dimensional mechanics.

"You know." Beast hesitated. "I remember. . ." He swallowed. "The Night of Confusion." Wasn't that what he had heard them call it? "And I'm sorry." His eyes looked pleading. "I always thought that if I had been there. . ." He hesitated, "I could have helped. . ." Then he swallowed again. "_Sort it all out_."

"Hank." She breathed throatily and laid a hand on his forearm. "_Everything_ happens for a reason." 

She looked as though she might cry. "I'd do it all again." She nodded. "Just for the chance." She nodded at Hank's bags, behind him. "So that I can be here, now, when he needs me." Tears flooded her lower lid, but did not fall. "You said he saves _whole_ _worlds_ Hank." She let her head sway as though the idea were overwhelming. "I get to help out _now_ Hank, when it really matters." One small tear escaped and ran down her cheek but she didn't notice. "How can I regret anything that brought us here?" She looked as though an idea had struck her suddenly.

"Hank, " She began "I'd die Hank, I'd die just for the chance to let this unfold like it should." She nodded with herself. "To bring him home safe."

"I didn't mean to suggest. . ." He was at a loss. How much had she realized about her past? About the other Rogue?

"You didn't." She smiled and shook her head, then wiped her eyes. "But I don't think I've been clear with you Hank." She looked him in the eye "Lucas picked you." She let it sink in. "When he was looking to contact someone, about _fixing things here_, it was **you**."

"Yes." Hank was treading delicately. Xavier had said not to discuss these things too closely with her at first.

"You see?" She said dramatically "He _knows_ Hank. Who he can trust and who's true to their word."

Hank had not considered this before.

"And if he trusts this Frost woman enough to leave her there alone, for any period of time. . ."

"Yes." Hank agreed. "I see." And he really did, for the first time. 

All it really came down to was; Did he trust Lucas' judgement?

And he did.

Just then, a light twinkled by Hank's bags and several metal objects appeared on the floor, then shifted and clattered as they settled. A note was affixed to the top item.

"What's all that?" Marie hopped down off the table.

Hank held up the four interlaced rings and read the note. "Oh dear." He cocked one eyebrow quizzically. "She wants me to wear handcuffs."


	21. Alone Ch21 Some Minor Flux

Chapter Twenty One: Some Minor Flux

Silently, Emma cursed herself as she reviewed the security log.

It had been three hours since she had transported The Beast on to the station.

He had complied in every request and produced appropriate explanations for anything she asked of him. 

He was insufferably pleased with the stations technology and his chance to examine it. So much so that Emma considered the possibility that she had brought a drug user to the station.

And then it happened. Beast was working with his hands over his head, wearing the station's magnetic restraint system, which she had sent to the planet, and he reset a minor, yet vital, power system.

And the restraints opened and fell from his body.

"Oh, dear." Emma had heard him say.

"What is it?" She asked, coming from the next room.

"Nothing." He had replied "Short of the most brilliant power distribution network I've ever seen."

And she had ignored it. Ignored him. And later when she saw the flaw in the security log, and she went to check, he had the restraint system back in place. She was determined to discover what he had been up to, and so she calibrated the stations equipment to reveal what she felt was surely some form of foul treachery.

And she saw him, looking in shock and horror at the falling restraints. Saw him scooping them up, and reactivating the power circuit, then reattaching them where they belonged.

She watched him breathe a sigh of relief, after expressing his mock awe to her, about the power distribution system.

And suddenly, she saw how very sexy Hank was. How broad his chest was, the thickness of his neck and shoulders, and his intelligent, deep-set eyes. She remembered how decadent it was to lay back and loose herself in a thick fur rug.

She shook, subtly, with a realization. Something had changed. She had never found _decency_ to be attractive before. What was this about?

She turned toward her reflection in the monitors to her right, and she saw something unexpected.

It was not her face. It was the face of a green, humanoid lizard. It hissed when their eyes met and she heard a loud pop from behind her. She turned, shaken, and was hit in the face with a bright flash of light.

"What has hank done now?" A part of her mind wondered.

But she couldn't hear him moving around the next room anymore. So she went to look.

The panels he had been working behind had been replaced. The slew of gadgets and gizmo's he had brought with him were totally absent. The station looked untouched.

"Jubilee?" Emma called softly, edging through the next floor of the station. It looked unused and uninhabited. What was going on?

Emma climbed the metal stairs back to the next level and wandered towards the small galley kitchen. And in doing so she found herself crossing the exact time and space she had witnessed herself in through the stations equipment, just one week before.

She froze when she felt his three fingered hand slip around her waist from behind. She closed her eyes as she felt his familiar velvet kisses on her neck. And she began to melt as he casually stroked her calf with the spade of his tail.

"I've brought you your favorite coo-kies, my sweet one." His breath was warm and close. It felt like the only heat in the whole of space. He placed the small china plate on the metal table before her and wrapped his now free hand around to meet the other. 

"What," She was faltering, smiling and throwing her head back, running her fingers through his thick hair. "What is the current probability quotient?" She asked Kurt.

"1-7-2-4-6 to 1" The computer replied.

Emma knew what this meant. The station was answering her voice commands. She was the Keeper.

"Come to bed Emma. You can play more God tomorrow."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Yes." She said. "Of course." She realized. "Pleasure. . ."

"Before pleasure." He cooed their mantra softly.

"No one we've approached can af-ford a miracle right now." His skin was warm and taught over his frame, just as she remembered. "Give them time my queen." He massaged her hips with his thick three fingered hands.

"I love you Kurt." She smiled, looking deep in to his golden orbed eyes.

He looked to her left hand. "It is why you married me." His little pointed teeth betrayed his true contentment and joy.

"Yes." She said, as though he had just asked her. "I love you that much." She smiled.

"Computer." She said at last. "Reset probability quotient to 2-4-6-0-1." She caressed his face one last time with her fingertips. "To 1." She concluded.

And another bright flash filled the room, and she was alone.

"Rest now." She said softly. "My, sweet, Kurt."

"Did you say something?" Beast poked his head around the corner.

"Yes." She recovered gracefully. "Did you just reset the probability quotient?" She eyed him.

"I attached a field meter to monitor the input strength. It might have caused a minor flux." Beast looked concerned.

"Oh, alright." Emma smiled at him, genuinely. "That explains it." She said although it really didn't. "Get back to work." She said almost playfully.

He bobbed his head appreciatively, saluted her with a ratchet handle and disappeared back in to the next room.

Emma slipped back to her bedroom and braced herself. She kneeled down in front of the small metal table next to her bed. She slipped the drawer open and took out the fine, white, silk scarf. She cradled it gingerly.

She breathed slowly, shallowly, and unfolded it. 

There was nothing inside. The probability token had been activated and was now gone.

Emma wiped her eyes with the scarf and put it away. It was the first gift Kurt had ever given to her and she would cherish it in private moments for the rest of her life. But her old life was written in the fires of hell itself, and this, her new life, was destined to be written in the stars.

Emma composed herself and found a peaceful space within.

She returned her attention to the monitors. The recording of Beast was replaying. He looked so shocked and dismayed at the restraints failure that, after a few replays, she actually laughed at him.

She felt clean and pure in a way she had never known as she went to check on Jubilee, passing through the junction where Hank had accidentally disconnected the restraint system. She looked up at the junction point and discovered that Hank had welded a bar across the access port to prevent anyone else from tampering with the restraint's power supply.

And, upon this realization, she felt a deep and sensual attraction to Dr. Hank McCoy. Thoughts of broad shoulders and deep shag fur between her fingers filled her mind.

She turned and cast her eyes down the hall, to where he was idly studying the readouts on half a dozen machines and gauges.

He saw her and smiled. 

She nodded and stepped away, out of sight, and exhaled an excited breath. _Those shorts of his keep NO secrets! _ She actually giggled, covered her mouth, and went scurrying off to find Jubilee. _And he is a Doctor. . ._


	22. Alone Ch22 Potentials Recognized

Chapter Twenty Two: Potentials Recognized

Hank yawned and stretched. The noise echoed through the station and Hank winced.

"You sound tired." Emma appeared behind him. 

He whipped around to face her. "Excuse me." He said sheepishly.

She smiled coyly, as though she knew something he didn't. He could scarcely believe that this was the same woman who looked so formidable just yesterday. "I have a room prepared for you." She said quite plainly. "I'm sure it's quite comfortable."

"I'm sure it is, but I should. . ."

"You're going to bed now." She told him.

"I see." He smiled at her. "Thank you. I am tired."

"But you were afraid I would make you leave the station. And maybe you wouldn't make it back?" She ventured.

"Guilty." He breathed, too tired to quip. 

"Come on then." She motioned for him to follow.

"Right in here." She ushered him in to another room, and let her eyes roam over his body, entranced by the sheer mass of his muscle as it flexed beneath his fur. He looked powerful.

The room was nice, a wide bed and comfortable mattress. 

"I trust you don't mind if I lock the door?" It was the first time she had asked his permission to enforce a security measure. "Just for my own piece of mind?"

"Of course not." He turned from the bed and saw her standing in the doorway. "I just. . ."

But he had forgotten what he was saying. "Is that your perfume?" He asked suddenly. "It's quite fetching."

"Thank you." She smiled demurely. "I was hoping you might notice."

"Really?" Hank asked, surprised.

She looked away, and seemed to consider something for a moment. "It's nice to know a girl has options." She said at last, turning to face him.

Now it was his turn to smile knowingly. "My dear Miss Frost, " He slowly closed the distance between them. "I want you to feel free to **_exercise_ _me_**, as an _option_, **_any time you wish_**." His voice was soft and intimate, a hushed tone.

She leaned in, as though she might kiss him. "Maybe I will." She said sincerely. "Once you're not so worn out."

And she keyed the lock, so the door swooshed closed between them.

"Well, I'm a lot more awake now." Hank said, muffled by the door.

Emma keyed the intercom in the door panel "You've got eight hours." She said before adding "Handsome."

She heard him chuckle.

She keyed the button again. "And I've decided, that if you like, and you continue to behave," She was smiling at the thought now. "You may stay onboard until Logan and Marie return with Lucas." Before quickly adding "**Regardless** of your. . . _Availability_ to be _exercised_?"

She waited a long moment for some clever retort or innuendo.

And just when she let go of the button and had given up on any answer, she heard him speak. He was close to his side of the door and obviously somewhat touched to have, somehow, earned her trust to some degree.

"Thank you Emma." He said softly. "Thank you very much."

And she heard him cross the room and collapse on the bed.

"Sleep tight." She said so soft no one could hear her, still uncomfortable and uneasy with executing the actions of a good woman.

And Emma wandered off to sleep alone.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Jubilee was already packed. 

She had been packed for three days. It had been a lot of fun to 'round up' the proper clothing. Western wear looked real good on her even though it wasn't her style. _Lucas would look good as a Goth. . ._

Her mind seemed to wander back to Lucas quite a lot lately. She was thrilled to find out he was alive. Relieved in ways that she hadn't realized she was stressed. But she couldn't ignore her part in losing Lucas in the first place. _He had said he would be back. . ._

And she wasn't sure at the time. Wasn't sure he was real, or true to his word if he was. So she tried to test him. Only, he was off being a decent man. He didn't have enough time to meet her demands.

__

But it wasn't really like that. . .

Her mind wandered back to that day.

"Lookslikewolvieyummy. . ." She recalled how she blasted him, sent him sliding. "_Fight me_!" She had thought. "_This is my chance_!"

Jubilee saw her face in the mirror and had to look away. Her mind connected it to her reflection in a river.

How many times had she looked in to that river, and wondered about slipping, tempting fate with an '_accident'_. Those were the bad moments. And she had always pulled back and refrained.

"Don't go where you're not invited." Someone had once told her about suicide. "It's rude."

__

And she never did.

But she did tempt fate. And it never ended well.

The glories and wonders of life were all hidden in the real challenges and **not** in the ones she made for herself.

But she had pushed Lucas, hopeful, that if he fought back. . . She might lose.

She remembered how fast and agile he was as he dove and pinned her down to the ground. She remembered the delicious weight of him, holding her down.

But he was too heavy to believe. Surely he was a delusion; she had been in a rockslide, or was being crushed by something else, something far more plausible than a savior.

And she had blasted him.

__

I should have kissed him. . .

And she thought about how delicious that would have been. To have simply surrendered to her own impetuous nature. . .

I hadn't been myself in ages at that point. . . 

It was true, she had been running on instinct. And instinct is a powerful master.

__

If I could do it all over. . . She stopped herself and began again. _When we find him, I will. . ._

But the thoughts refused to come. She was after all, going with his parents! She laughed at herself.

__

Besides, who says he's interested anyway?

And with that thought in mind she began to search his room.


	23. Alone Ch23 Treasure Hunting

Chapter Twenty-Three: Treasure Hunting

Jubilee stepped in to Lucas' room and took a brief mental picture of the room, just as it was.

"It has to look just like this when I leave." She said to herself. 

"But," she touched a finger to her lips and bit the nail nervously. "His room's so small." And it was, not only smaller than Jubilee's room, but Emma's as well. "Why take the small room when you're the only one onboard?" It wasn't particularly close to any of the stations other facilities. What benefit might there be?

There were no real decorations to speak of. An X-Uniform and several sweatshirts from the Xavier Institute and his School for the Gifted hung in the closet. "Speaking of _boring_." She observed. 

The trashcan betrayed a few crumpled and shredded pages of quantum math equations, at least one page of which bore human teeth-marks. After a moment she realized that Lucas was trying to calculate, to his best guess, the polar opposite of a set of co-ordinates.

"Duh, even the computer can't do that." And she suddenly realized how much time and energy he must have invested in re-uniting his parents. She hung her head low and wondered what kind of man, both chews his math and makes things like this happen.

"Pretty cool." She, reluctantly, admitted out loud.

A streak of purple was reflected on the wall over his bed. It was coming through the small rounded, rectangular window.

She crawled across the bed to look out the room's only window.

And she was amazed, for a moment, forgetting to breathe.

There hung the small blue earth below; In a constant state of purple-plasmic-flux. It was not the occasional flare of plasma that could be seen from so many other windows on the station. Instead it was a constant and steady flickering dance.

"What's going on?" She wondered, then squinted. It was the Americas, alive and overlapping in hot purple lightning.

And it slowly dawned on her. There were far more probabilities, and therefor, far more dimensions overlapping here than say, in the ocean, or the less populated areas. It was beautiful.

Soon she found herself sitting, with her knees pulled up to her chest, and just staring out the window.

"Best seat in the house." She had said it to herself, but in Lucas' voice. It was just a guess, not real telepathy, but it felt like an educated guess.

After a while she noticed the original glare that attracted her attention was dancing across her face where she sat. She turned her head to see it on the wall and was struck again by how much it looked like natural light reflected on the playful waves of a gentle lake.

And she looked up, where this same natural effect of the light danced above Lucas' bed.

And she noticed for the first time that the roof of his little bed alcove was impressed, raised by several inches.

And vandalized. . .She realized.

Someone had taken a blue marker and drawn, scribbled and written all over the roof.

She scooted down, stretched out on his bed and looked up properly. 

Someone had drawn a picture on this station, orbiting and earth and obviously drawn from this window's view. Written beneath it was the figure "1:1" (Pronounced "One to One" and representing balance or equality).

She studied it for a moment, then touched the metal where it was scrawled.

"Is this how you get to sleep?" She whispered. "How you let go of all those worlds and finally _sleep_?" She understood. It had kept her up, probably Emma too, after a flurry of activity or a string of major or minor dimensional aversions, it's hard to leave it be. _You can't help but turn it over in your mind, there are so many worlds, surely they all need something, some of them right now. . ._

But she had Emma. Lucas was here alone. 

And she could see what they had in common. He was the only person in his world too, before Emma's accidental arrival and surprise residence. _Alone in infinity, literally. . ._

And Jubilee looked up to where, the much taller, Lucas' eyes would have fallen were he lying in his bed.

And her mouth opened slowly, hanging in shock, tinged with relief.

He had used the marker to turn the dancing reflection on the ceiling in to a roughly drawn river. Kneeling at the river was a dark and shadowy human form, half crumpled and collapsed. But reflected in his 'river' of real dancing light, was a careful, but roughly drawn face. Her hair was wild (and blue), her eyes were thin slits (and blue), but over her reflected eye, was a thin "M". It was the only piece of the whole drawing that betrayed a perfect color match.

She widened her view. While he had drawn a river and allowed it to be animated by the natural reflection, the reflection's edges were not aligned to the hand drawn river edges.

The edges of the reflection were not purple, they were white and rimmed with a thin ribbon of deep, neon red that was constantly flaring and flowing out of the reflection.

And she could see that he had rimmed the river scene with four pair of (blue) marker drawn hands so as to give the impression that the hands were firing the flaring white/red rim of the reflection.

"You. . ." She had forgotten that he wasn't there, and they didn't know each other. "You did this that night, after I saw you but before. . ."

She touched a hand to her lips again, and fought the urge to bite her nails.

Eight hours later:

"Jubilee, can you come up here?" The intercom repeated.

"Uh, sure." She shook her head awake. "What is it Emma?" 

"Hank's done it. We're ready to send you."

"Let me shower. I overslept."

"You've got about twenty minutes until we're supposed to retrieve his parents."

"Thanks Em."

Jubilee swept out of bed and scooped up her clothes. She had put this outfit together in advance, complete with accessories. The bundle was menacingly heavy, a part of her despised the weight and expressed this displeasure as an equally sized knot in her stomach.

__

It's more honest this way. . . She reassured herself. _At least, if they see it, they'll know you might be dangerous. They'll think twice. . ._

She hoped. _The idea of a world FULL of people. . ._

She showered with the door open and toweled herself off. She pulled on her clothes, and with a moments hesitation, finally tied the leather strap around her leg, above the knee, securing her gun at her side.

"Someone puttin' on a play?" Wolverine asked as she entered the room. 

"Nice to meet you. Welcome to my home." Jubilee bit sarcastically.

"Actually Logan, the period costumes were my idea." Hank smiled, absently scratching at the back of his head. "We've taken the liberty of providing your sizes as well." Beast tossed Logan a backpack. "You can change right through there."

"Probably want to wear his yellow spandex." Jubilee rumbled low enough that only Wolverine could hear her, a habit she'd developed on her own world where she had often served as his sidekick.

He pretended to laugh, and cast her a glance, but he was wearing it under his clothes.

"This is a-dorable!" Marie was looking in to the bag, having swept it up and began trekking toward the 'changing' room. "And I **_love_** what you're wearing." Marie told Jubilee, shooting a look to Logan who simply shrugged helplessly at Beast. 

Beast smiled understandingly and handed Logan a set of pointy-toed boots. "Lose the steel toe's Logan." He whispered and proceeded off to make his final preparations for their departure.

"So how's this work again?" Jubilee stepped in to the booth.

"It's a microwave chamber." Hank explained, and she jumped right out.

He smiled. "Not that kind Jubilee." He looked down at the control panel and calculated in Logan's extra mass to the power distribution network. "It's simulating the conditions of Lucas' accident internally and allowing you to use the stations normal transportation technology to deposit you in the past."

He found a loose screw on the front of a panel and pulled out a screwdriver. He proceeded to tighten it down. "I think."

She eyed him. "Are you kid-ding?" She ventured.

"Mostly." He admitted. "There is an extremely finite chance that the waveform we're creating will travel to the future instead of the past.

"In which case?" Jubilee didn't like the sound of this.

"The Keeper of that time will be able to alter one variable and use this equipment to either return you here or send you strait on to your original destination. It's all right here in the computer." He patted the machine, but saw she was still nervous. He took her hand. "Don't worry. I've got this."

She exhaled. "Sorry. Just a rocky start." She smiled. "And I'm excited."

"I understand." Beast patted her hand and wandered off.

"Can you use that?" Came the gruff voice from behind her.

And without missing a beat or breath she instantly produced the gun, with a lightning flourish that ended in the drawing back of the hammer, as it met Logan's right eye.

His eye twitched and he moved instinctively, despite himself. Inside he winced_. That never would have happened before. . ._ He chastised himself.

"I've had plenty of time to practice. Found myself an empty dimension and did nothing but." She explained, re-holstering it twice as fast. 

"Training for a mission?" He asked.

She shrugged. "Can't carry it and not know how to use it."

"Using it ain't the same as killing." Wolverine eyed her "You up for killin' with it?"

"I could kill just fine without it." She assured him. "But I've never killed anything I didn't want to eat."

"Hunter hunh?" He asked.

"When I had to be." She pushed past him. She had the feeling he was looking for a flaw, something to exploit.

__

Nothing wrong with huntin' like that. . . He admitted quietly to himself. _Sarcastic little bitc. . ._

"Ta-DA!" Marie stepped out of the changing room with a flourish to model her new western wear.

Logan let out a burst of breath. "You look _fine_ darlin'_. Too fine_. We should move out west." He leered at her obviously and leisurely.

"You know, we can get you two a room." Jubilee whispered to Marie who was staring back, looking to Logan, playfully and expectantly.

"Actually, Jubilee, If Logan would change his clothes. . ." But beast didn't have to say any more.

"Come on now Logan." Marie was pushing him towards the door of the changing room. "Don't be such a baby."

He slowed only to retrieve his beer from the counter as he passed, and then relented and entered the room.

"And you." Marie slapped Jubilee playfully on her shoulder. "Don't encourage him." She smiled slyly "That's mah job." She explained.

"Now, children." Emma entered the room, apparently quite pleased with herself. "Do play nice."

"And I ain't wearing these chaps!" Logan growled through the door. This was followed by two bursts of steel, some ripping, and the sound of a lump of leather being thrown violently to the floor.

Beast sighed. Then shrugged. _You can't please everyone_. He reasoned, and turned his attention, instead, to Emma.

"Good morning." He breathed heavily as he passed her.

"Very." She agreed, following him out of the room.

Jubilee and Marie exchanged glances and raised eyebrows.

"Is it a good morning Jubilee?" Marie asked, tossing her hair excessively.

"Very!" Jubilee replied in a throaty exhale while striking a dramatic pose.

And they chuckled a bit and continued what they were doing, preparing to leave.


	24. Alone Ch24 A Ray of Hope

Chapter Next: A Ray of Hope

"What good is it to camp here?" Jubilee asked again for the ninth or tenth time. "We could be in town in an hour." She looked off across the distance. "We'll never find him just sitting here."

"If it's all so hopeless why don't you just leave? We don't need a chaperone, no matter what your Miss Frost seems to think." Logan was worn and tired. He couldn't remember sleeping at all this week.

Jubilee was suddenly calm. "Okay, you want the truth?" She eyed Logan warily. "It's because we've been insane recently. You, your wife, and myself. I don't know if I trust any of our decisions."

She saw him cock his head to one side.

"I was freakishly out of my mind the last time Lucas and I spoke. I was gunning to kill him, trying my best. And he just kept talking and trying to reach me."

Logan felt a tug of emotional debt. This sounded familiar.

"Lucas is the calm little center of a world made up of insane and damaged people." She gestured to the world around her. "And that world needs its center. Or it's destined to come apart."

"That's why we're here." He had crossed his arms and was staring at her plainly.

"No." She said. "That's why we're in the past, but not here." 

"Didn't Beast explain about impacting the timeline?" He asked her. "Or the social climate?"

She took a quick breath and then exhaled. "So then you go if you don't trust the town to handle _my skin-color and slang._" She spit the words, proving she had heard the appropriate lecture. "But Logan, please." She pleaded. "What if he's there? _Right there_?" She motioned to the distant lights of the small town. "And we sat here all night? Not knowing?"

And that he understood. _Right there._ He considered her. "What is it that you think of that makes you flinch like that when you talk about him?"

She stopped moving. "Did I flinch?" 

"Yep. Did it again, just now." He pointed to her arm.

And she saw it again, in her mind, the ghostly image of a man, tumbling backward across the sky, outlined and illuminated in a cloud of glittering gold.

"Nothing." She grabbed her hand with the other and held it still.

"Tell me." He said softly. "And if you've got a better reason to be here than I do," he felt a flush of anger. "Or his mother does, then I'll go tonight, myself."

She raised her eyes to meet his. "You and I were close in my world. You know that?" She asked.

He shook his head and listened.

"And I could tell my Wolvie." She looked ready to cry. "But I don't know you." She bit back on her tears and closed her eyes.

"I saw him fall." She said in a voice unlike her own. More confident and more adult. "I made him fall."

Marie rose from around the fire, listening.

"I was signaling him." Her voice wavered. "And the station's defenses misunderstood, and targeted me."

She had begun to shake all over. "And he went out of the station, he was trying to. . ." She started to cry. 

"And I saw him, his outline, lit in sparkles." She was gesturing and trying to wipe her eyes. "And when I thought I had killed . . ."

And suddenly, there was Marie. "Go now Logan." She smiled and lay a hand on his chest. "If you wont let her go on alone. We're well outta times way out here." And with that she turned to steer the girl back to the fire, wrapping her in a comforting arm. 

When Jubilee looked up again, Logan was gone.

****

A Short Time Later:

Wolverine pushed the doors apart and stood, framed in the doorway.

The saloon was almost empty. A few regulars sat, or rather slumped, at their accustomed spots. A table of local ranchers were quietly discussing local politics among them selves. They stopped talking when they noticed Wolverine. They started again as he set his gaze on the bartender and began to cross the room.

The bartender was a big man. His mustache and dark eyes gave him a decidedly Mexican appearance, yet he was tall, near on to six feet, and fair skinned.

Wolverine sat down and fell easily in to the conversation. "What's the hardest thing you've got?" He asked, smiling just enough to be friendly.

The bartender pulled down a bottle and set it on the bar, but didn't let go. "Expensive." The bartender sized him up.

Wolverine leaned back and pulled a small leather pouch out of his gun-belt. He cupped the pouch in his hand and used his thumb to ease two small nuggets of gold out and on to the bar. He eyed the sack of gold. _Leave it to Beast to think of everything._

"Two more." The bartender told him.

"For one bottle?" Wolverine growled, eyeing him.

The bartender looked hard at him for a moment before shrugging, grinning, and scooping up the gold. He slid the bottle across the bar.

"I'm looking for someone." Wolverine eyed a jar of cigars and turned out another nugget before gesturing to them.

"Common story." The bartender wiped his hands on his apron then gave up four cigars.

"My boy." Wolverine bit the end off the cigar and lit with a wooden match from on the bar.

"I know him." The bartender nodded twice. "You're kin to Luke Logan or I'm my grand-ma." He cast his eyes upward. "God rest her soul."

Logan raised his bottle to salute the bartender's words. 

The bartender smiled.

"Luke told me once he didn't know his daddy." The bartender was cordial but suspicious.

"He don't." Wolverine swallowed a mighty quaff off the bottle. "Need to fix that." He nodded.

"Maybe he don't want it fixed." The bartender had stopped smiling. "I don't know that sort of thing about him."

Wolverine considered his words. "You're a good bartender." He said at last.

The man smiled again. "Luke's a good customer." He nodded. "Pays for his drinks _and_ what he breaks. Even if he is always singin' them demon songs that ain't nobody ever heard before."

"Demon songs?" Logan cocked an eyebrow and halted in mid motion.

"That's what Reverend Craig calls 'em." He explained. "Although they don't all warrant that par-ticular title." He smiled slyly at a memory. "Luke can get a group powerful worked up when he's a lookin' to blow off some steam."

"Is that a fact?" Wolverine smiled. "I didn't know he sings."

"After he's had a few. And after a fashion."

"Not so good, hunh?" Wolverine smiled.

The bartender considered his words. "I think, he thinks, he's just fine." He smirked. "Who am I to argue?" 

Wolverine took another pull on his bottle.

"So how is it you never met your boy?" The bartender leaned on the bar, resting on his elbows, and spoke privately.

"I was locked up." Wolverine confided, before adding the lie: "Down in Bolivia."

"Now where would that that be? Bolivia?"

"South. On the other side of Mexico." He took another drink.

"That's fer' sure south all right." The bartender picked up a glass and began idly cleaning it with a towel. "Sad thing. To be locked up, miss a boy growin' up." He raised a cautious eye. "You _sure_ he wants to see you mister?"

Wolverine smiled a wide, intoxicated grin. "He's the one who got me out." 

The bartender considered him again, more favorably this time.

"Luke don't live in town." He told him at last. "He lives north and to the west." 

"What's up there?" Wolverine wondered out loud.

The bartender considered his words carefully. "Well, that would be the local Tribe." He wiped the bar slowly, trying to gauge Logan's reaction.

Logan considered this. "How far?"

"Half a days ride."

"Not so far." He shrugged.

"Trail's pretty clear by daylight." He motioned out the window. "Be too dark to find soon."

"Sure enough." Logan sloshed the remnants in the bottle.

"You got a place for tonight?"

"Little camp outside town." He swallowed the last of his whiskey.

"Travelin' alone?" 

"Nope." Wolverine smiled. "We're planning a family reunion." He put the bottle down on the bar and stood up. "His sister stayed home." He shrugged. "She didn't want to stay put." He continued. "But I've spent some time with her since I got back. And you know, I wanted the same chance with my boy." He smiled a wavy grin. "We're going back that way afterward." He took a deep breath and hiked up his pants. 

" Best not to tax a woman on the trails anyhow." The bartender nodded.

"Bub, you don't know the women in our family." He grinned. "They're headstrong, impulsive and tougher than most railroad men." He nodded. "Luke's mother is out at the camp right now." He smiled. "And this girl that Luke was a flirting with." He felt slightly drunk and he made a dismissive gesture. "Forget about it." The way he said it sounded vaguely Italian, causing him to vaguely wondered if _he_ were at all Italian.

"I can't even imagine the type of woman that could keep up with Lucas. He lives his life like you drink the hard stuff."

"She had him on the run in their last tiff." He confided. "Tried him with both barrels too." He smiled warmly. "I think it's why he likes her." He said as though it had just occurred.

"Sounds about right." The bartender's head bobbed up and down. "Luke _does_ like a challenge." He admitted.

Wolverine stuck out his hand. "Thank you much, . . ." He reached for a name.

"Ray." The bartender took the hand and shook it. "Mister. . ."

"It's just Logan." Wolverine smiled. "Thanks for the wet." 

He considered Ray for a moment. "Maybe I could send Luke's girl here, to wait in case he turns up?" He eyed Ray. "Keep her off the trail until we make it back." He looked around. "She's a tough little Chinese thing. Think that would be all right?"

Ray shrugged. "Paying customers are always welcome." He nodded. "And, for Luke, I'd even run a tab."

Wolverine nodded. "Fair enough." 

"Although I'm guessing you just turned a problem of yours in to a problem of mine." He wiped a glass absently on his apron. "Since the trail don't phase her none?" He concluded.

Wolverine flashed a giant, drunken and guilty smile. "See." He said respectfully "You _are_ a good bartender Probably saw that coming a mile away." He tipped his hat, then took a deep breath, spun on his heal, and exhaled slowly as he walked out of the bar.

"Like most trouble." Ray said out loud. A few of the ranchers chuckled at him as he did.

Ray began to hum to himself as he wiped down the bar where Logan had been sitting, even though it wasn't really necessary. _Oh Lord!_, he wondered. _What did I get myself in to now? _The tune he was humming was 'Escape' also known as the Pina Colada Song.


	25. Alone Ch25 Back In Camp

Chapter Twenty Five: Back in Camp

Marie turned the canteen over, and spilled a healthy swallow of cool water on to the cloth in her other hand.

"Here Honey, let me." She wiped hesitantly at Jubilee's face, wiping away the tears and grime from the days events, while holding her by the chin.

Marie smiled at the sad and fragile face beneath. And she studied the tattooed "m" over Jubilee's eye.

"You lived in Bishop's future." Marie said as though it were a question.

"Outlived everybody there." Jubilee took a swallow of her water and looked in to the fire. "Hated it."

"So you became a threat to the **_whole_** mulit-verse?" Her tone was incredulous and filled with humor.

"Sure it **_sounds_** _bad_ when you say it like that." Jubilee smiled idly at the ground as she kicked at some dirt.

Marie smiled at the girl. "You know it was his choice." She said at last. "To leave the station, to wrestle the gun. He did it for you, and himself, but _he_ did it."

"What are you saying?"

"Let it _go_ Hun." She smiled in delight. "Life doesn't begin until you let go of those things."

"I don't understand you." Jubilee massaged her temples.

"Ah'm easy enough to figure out Sug." She smiled. "Lucas is your mystery."

The stars were coming out, the sky was clear and calm.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Marie smiled. "You have to find out if all the reasons you think he saved you are true or not." She looked very wise, suddenly, by the firelight. "If he really cares about you, or even people in general, enough to go through what he did. If he's really as decent and kind as he seems." She bit her lower lip with her upper teeth, as if debating what to say next. "What he's like in bed."

Jubilee's mouth dropped in shock and Marie laughed out loud. Jubilee's jaw swung a few times but didn't form any words. 

Marie was suddenly quiet and confessing. "That lady, Miss Frost, she told me that Lucas was a sweet on you." She swallowed and cast her eyes down to the ground. "And I can tell about you. I had most of the same thoughts about Logan when I met him, and when he almost died saving me." She exchanged a knowing glance with Jubilee. "And life doesn't begin." She repeated "Until you let those things go."

Jubilee sighed. "So, tell me." She said at last, and shrugged, a small smile playing about the corners of her mouth. "What was Wolvie like in bed?"

And they both had to laugh, as Rogue blushed, quite deeply and completely, with a subtle look of contented pleasure.

"Well, . . . " She began hesitantly. "Ah, . . ." 


	26. Alone Ch26 Comfortable

Chapter Twenty Six: Comfortable?

"Do you have time to take a little break?" Emma asked, her hands clasped behind her.

"Sure." Beast smiled. "Everything important has been done already." He seemed shy "I was just snooping."

"I thought I might take those manacles off." Emma's smile betrayed her before her words. "After. . ."

Emma turned the remotes dial to the right and Hank's manacled hands stretched out above him as his legs mounted themselves to the floor. 

"I, um," He reasoned out loud. "Af" His eyes darted from his wrists to his feet and back. "Ter?"

"Oh, don't worry.' Emma cooed at him as she sauntered over. "You didn't do anything wrong." She smiled intimately. "I just thought I would let you in on a few of my personal rules for while I'm still running the station." She reached out with both hands and ran them over Hank's wide chest. 

"My first rule is to try to be a good hostess." She smiled. "Are you comfortable?" She tried to look innocent as she stroked his shoulders and pressed her body to his.

"Unbelievably." He breathed slowly.

"Good." She nuzzled her face in to his neck and slid her arms up behind him. He was a great wall of muscle. "Because I believe my guests should be just as comfortable as I am."

"Madam, I **do** believe we are on the _same_ _page_." Beast whispered in her ear.

She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her back.

"You know if you let me down from here, " He smiled "I can show you how agile I am."

"But if you stay like that" She whispered back " You get your turn later." She nibbled his ear "And _I_ wear the cuffs."

Hank's back stiffened strait. He had never been propositioned like this in his life. "Then by all means" He pressed his face to her bare and supple neck before whispering. "Leave them on."


	27. Alone Ch27 All About That

Chapter Twenty-Seven: All About That

":She's too young for him." Logan grimaced. 

Rogue was shocked. "She's practically mah age Logan."

He looked at her and blinked three times before returning his eyes to the trail. "And I'm way too old for you.." He conceded.

"Ah heard the Professor say you could be up to a hundred years old Logan. One Hundred. _Right now_!" She shook her head. "No one in mah family lives much past their sixties."

He turned to her, shocked. Sixties?

"So who are you supposed to date if you're a hundred?" She asked. "Or me, are you off limits because Ah wont live as long?"

"Marie." He wasn't sure what to say.

"We can't let things like that matter." She smiled at him. "Not and make a stab at a real life." She saw him reluctantly relax in the saddle.

"Why don't you like her, for real?" Marie cocked her hat to block the sun and allow her to look slyly at Logan. She was pressing one eye closed against the sun.

He pursed his lips in to a small, slight smile.

"Not gonna say?" Marie asked. "For me?"

"I can't say if I don't know." He shrugged. "It could be a lot of things."

"She muscled in on your adventure." 

"Yeah." He looked up to the horizon and took a look around, just to stay aware. "But she had to come. I get it." He swallowed and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

"And she knows just how to get under your skin, because she knew another Wolverine."

"You noticed that?" he stopped his horse.

Rogue pulled back to join him. "No. She told me."

"Hunh." He looked deep in thought. _Right, she called him 'Wolvie'. . ._

He motioned gently and the horses began meandering forward again. 

"I don't think that's it."

Marie suddenly giggled. She looked at Logan, who was looking at her, and she turned away,. Unable to stop herself from giggling further. She pressed the back of her gloved fingers to her mouth, in a fist, but couldn't stop.

"What?" He implored, he had seen her like this before.

She waved a hand and kept her lips pressed tight.

"Marie?" He began sideling his horse up to hers and she began pulling away.

"Damn it." He said softly, under his breath.

She wiped each eye with a soft cloth from in her vest. "I'm sorry." She smiled. "Girl talk last night, before you got back." 

"What did you talk about?" He was more afraid of the answer than he was of Sabertooth.

She began to giggle again.

"Oh, for Pete's sake." He looked back to the horizon. After a moment he spoke.

"I think," He said after a while "I remember her." He looked at Rogue. "From when I was blind."

"You do?" Marie looked.

"Yeah. She used to come to visit me, I think she felt bad for me." He shrugged. "But it was a bad move. She wasn't who I was looking for." He looked back at Rogue. "But I think she and I used to talk."

"Different worlds Logan." She looked at him. "But we know all about that." He eyes fell to her saddle. "Don't we?"

He swallowed and looked up and away. "I guess we do."

"Ah don't want to think about it." She said, still not looking up. "I want to count my blessings and keep mah fingers crossed." She looked up and looked him in the face. "But" She seemed pained for a moment. "There might come a day when we can't ignore the fact that we are not the same people we were when we got married."

She looked sheepish. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah." He felt a tear run down his face. It surprised him. "I know what you mean. And I don't want to talk about it either."

"But," She pressed. "If we have to, ever?" She needed to be clear.

He looked her in the face and took a deep breath. "I'm strong enough to let you go." He told her. "Just not quite strong enough to lose you." He took a quick and shallow breath. "If we need to talk about it, we can."

She sidled her horse up to his and took his hand. "We we're talking about sex." She said with a guilty grin.

"We were?" He asked.

"The girl talk silly, last night." She hugged his arm quickly and sympathetically. "She asked what you were like."

He looked almost horrified. "What did you say?"

"Ah told her she could watch some time." 

She watched him try to form words before she burst out laughing, lightly 'spurred' her horse and began to dash away.

Wolverine stood up, fully, hanging in the stirrups. He watched her tearing off across the desert. _She didn't really say that, did she?_

"I love you." He whispered, surprising himself, before turning to his horse. "Sorry boy." He said. "I know I'm heavy, but we've got to catch her."

And his horse looked at him as though he'd lost his mind before giving it his all.


	28. Alone Ch28 Coincidence

Chapter Twenty Eight: Coincidental

The old wooden sidewalk squeaked underfoot as Jubilation Lee walked in to town. She could hear several wagons being pulled by horses through the adjacent streets.

"Excuse me." The man's voice was impolite and demanding. She cast her eyes over her shoulder. He was taken aback by the sight of her tattoo, and he gasped despite himself.. 

The man wore the black garment and collar of a clergyman. 

She stepped aside and made a sweeping motion that indicated he should pass her by.

He huffed once and hefted the wooden crate he was carrying before scurrying on past.

Jubilee felt one of the corners of her mouth curl at the man. There was something about him she didn't like.

"That was the Reverend Craig." 

Jubilee turned to look just a few doors down. A tall man wearing an apron was making use of a handmade broom on the wood plank sidewalk. 

"What's his dysfunction?" She crossed her arms and leaned a shoulder against the front of an unopened general store.

"I could make a list." The bartender smiled. "But all you'd need to know is that Rev. Craig is convinced that God is a White Man." He raised a questioning eyebrow to see if he had said enough.

"Funny." She said curtly, before relaxing just a touch "I always thought SHE was a Chinese-American."

The idea seemed to amuse the barkeep as he finished sweeping off the walk. "Lucas probably wont be around until late tonight." He cast her a glance and saw that she was deflated. "Or maybe this afternoon." He said at last. 

He saw her brow slowly cloud with questions. 

"We don't get many young, female, Chinese gunfighters through these parts." He took a few more swipes at the walkway. "Specially right after Mr. Logan _Senior_ comes through telling me he's sending one by."

She smiled and nodded twice. "So there's no idea where else he might be, like right now?"

"Can't predict the weather either." He shrugged and shook his head slightly from side to side. "But you're welcome to wait." He pushed open one of the small wooden doors.

Jubilee looked around the street. Shops were opening and people were beginning to appear around town.

"Why not?" She shrugged at him and slipped in to the bar behind him.

It was dark inside and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The bartender swept around her and crossed the room. A moment later she followed him and sat down at the bar.

"You mind if I ask about that?" The bartender motioned to his own face, making an 'm' over one eye.

Jubilee shrugged. "Went to jail."

"Jail?" The man barked, obviously never having heard of such a thing.

She nodded as she sniffed at, then wrinkled her nose at, a jar of cigars. "Yep." She looked attentive and far more alert than his normal customers. "Some times they mark you for life when they don't mean to let you go."

Ray felt the floor begin to sink away as she spoke. He had seen a lot of things and heard a lot more talk since he had arrived here from Boston. But this girl was something else, like a stick of dynamite, exploding slowly, and all the time.

"And now, just how do you get out of a place like that?"

Jubilee was suddenly struck quiet. "Good friends I guess." She said at last. 

"Friends like Luke Logan?" 

"Yeah." She was quiet. "He saw me in there and tried to get me out." She paused. "And when he couldn't, one of his friends did."

"Called in some favors did he?" Ray smiled. This story was getting familiar.

"I guess he did, in a way." She shrugged. 

"My name's Ray, by the way." He stuck out his hand and a congenial smile.

"Jubilee." She shook his hand.

He leaned in conspiratorially close. "Can I ask you a question?"

Jubilee looked around. A few stragglers had been wandering in, and taking seats. No one seemed to be listening. 

'Sure." She nodded once. "What is it?"

"Is Luke planning something?" He searched her eyes for an answer. "A heist maybe?" He saw no reaction. "Organizing a posse?" Still, there was nothing. 

"Why would you ask that?" She studied him carefully.

"Well, you and Mr. Logan Senior, if you don't mind my saying so, you're strictly _talent_. And hired talent is the only kind we get around these parts. You've both mentioned doing some time too." He seemed to consider something else and then he didn't speak it.

"We're just passing through looking for Lucas." She paused. "I mean Luke." 

"Lot's of people are just passing through lately." Ray nodded. "Just sees a little coincidental is all."

"You got anything back there that isn't totally poisonous?" Jubilee peered behind the bar.

Ray smiled. "Something that Logan Senior _wouldn't_ drink, right?"

"Exactly." She was surprised that he had understood so quickly.

"Here." He slipped a small corked bottle of wine across the bar. "You can sip on this, no charge." He smiled at her incredulous look. "I've got a whole case of it from some Frenchmen who couldn't pay their bill. I thought you might give some of my regulars the idea to try it on their tabs."

"Free advertising, hunh?" She seemed less critical of it now. "That's one way to move drinks."

"I do know a few." He wiped his hands on his apron and scurried off to deal with a few customers.

A moment later he returned.

"Can I ask you a few things?" Jubilee cornered him in a quiet moment.

"Provided I'm not getting anyone in any trouble." He eyed her warily. 

"Just tell me about Luke. How long has he been here, what's he like to do when he's in town, has he been happy here?"

The questions seemed to be fair and honest ones, the kink Ray might have asked after a relation or friend. 

"I guess I first met Luke about nine months ago." He began. "And I take it he had been living with the local tribe for a while before that." He considered. "But I don't think he was around this time last year." 

"Close to a year though? I didn't realize it had been so long." Jubilee wondered as her mind toyed with idea's about what time could do to a person. 

"Going on a year I suppose." He shrugged. "Because I remember that he was here when Mrs. Kelsey-Jones became the Widow Kelsey-Jones. Everyone in the county turned up to help her bring in her crop. And I swear to you, every man that went there to help said that Luke was there, just a workin' away, day and night." 

He smiled, remembering. "Timothy Jones, The Widow's brother in law, he swears that Luke had his friends from the tribe out there, hiding in the fields and helping with the harvest. Says that no one man could do the things that Luke did to bring that field in." He shook his head. "If he did have some help, they were right sneaky about it. Must have been three dozen or so people out there and didn't none of them see anyone." He sniffed once. "Course, the Widow would have joined her late husband if she had looked out the window and seen a few red faces looking back." He raised her eyes to meet hers. "The Widow Jones lost her parents to the arrow on a wagon train." He explained. "Many years ago." 

Jubilee smiled a small, sad grin. 

"Personally." He leaned his elbows on the bar. "I like to think that they were out there, wearing buckskin, bare-chested, moving quiet, around the field." He looked sadly pleased. "It makes a nice circle out of her story."

"Yeah." Jubilee liked this man. "It does."

"As a matter of fact, I would venture to guess that Luke didn't come in to town before that." He searched his memory. "I guess, what with him livin' with the tribe, he sorta rounded that story out himself, didn't he?" He seemed to be realizing more than he was saying. "Even if he did do it all himself?" His eyes narrowed slowly.

"Well," She balked "How could he have?"

"Yeah." The bartender said slowly. "How could he?" He seemed to be struck by another idea. "You know, there was this one time, when Ol' Doc Stenson came in here, talkin' about pulling four bullets out of Luke. And you know, Luke was in here, the very next night. Without so much as a bandage." He shook his head. "I thought Doc was on the bottle again, confusing his faces." He definitely knew that something was up.

His eyes went wide and he looked at her. "And the one night that Clay Cutler's boy got thrown from his horse. He swore up and down that Luke got stomped after the horse reared. Said he thought Luke was dead for sure."

"But you said yourself, Luke's all right, isn't he?"

"Sure is. Right as rain." He agreed quickly. 

"So those things couldn't have happened, right?"

"I suppose not." He said, sounding unconvinced.

"Then don't worry me like that." She smiled playfully.

He was suddenly shy and embarrassed. "Sorry about that. I know you don't need me filling your head with notions."

"Plenty of room." She smiled with her eyes. "So," She asked slowly, "Have you ever known Lucas to have a girlfriend?"

Ray smiled slyly. "I think _Lucas_ needs a special kind of girl. " He smiled. "I know he sets the Wilson girls to giggling and flirtin'. And they're just about the pick of the litter out this way." He gauged her reaction. "Present company excluded."

Jubilee smiled. "You're awfully diplomatic for a bartender." She told him.

"Lady," He told her "When I saw you this morning I thought you were wearing too much gun." He was looking her directly in the eyes now. "And then when I got a good look, I saw the signs of wear on the top of your guns sight, and the shine on the leather, inside your holster, and I knew that those guns were drawn FAST." He held her attention. "And when I look at you now, I know, you give me the same feeling that Luke does." He nodded at her, and leaned back slightly. "Like you almost can't help being dangerous, and the rest of the world is just damn lucky you're minding your own business."

Jubilee definitely liked this man. She smiled, and felt her humor rising. "Why Ray, are you flirting with me?" She asked, feeling a bit like Emma.

Ray chuckled nervously and intentionally. "You." He told her. "You and Luke." He shook a finger at her and swallowed nervously. "You're probably meant to be." He laughed at himself for a moment, as he realized he was backing away. He purposely took two steps towards her again, flushing a bit red at the cheeks. "Both a bit touched I'd wager."

Jubilee shrugged, now bored with her game. "So tell me," She had him cornered in to the conversation "Who else happens to be 'coincidentally' passing through?"

And all the color drained out of his face.


	29. Alone Ch29 North and to the West

Chapter Twenty Nine: North and to the West

"He says you look like Lucas, but he wants proof." The young bronze-skinned youth held out a knife as he spoke. "He says that Lucas has told him things."

Logan looked to Marie and then to the boy and the old man. 

He held his fist out and popped out one blade.

The boy jumped but the old man did not. He simply looked from the blade to Logan's eyes.

Logan held out his other arm, the wrist exposed, and opened himself deep with a single pull of the claw.

The boy let out a gasp, gargle and minor shriek, but a focused look from the old man set him quiet again.

The old man then motioned that Wolverine bring his arm closer, and the man held and studied it as it slowly knit closed.

Finally he pursed his lips and nodded, then motioned for them to follow.

The boy fell in to step with Logan.

"Does it hurt?" The boy asked.

Wolverine nodded, quietly.

"Lucas is quiet too." He smiled. "Unless he's in town."

Wolverine smiled. "Yeah?"

The boy nodded. "He helps and hunts like everyone here." He smiled. "Half Red, we say."

"Only half?" Marie had sidled up next to the boy on the other side.

"He's _Wasichu_ too. A White man. What we call Half Black."

"Black?" Marie prodded. 

"Our teachings." The boy explained "A Good Red Road and a Black one." He looked up at the two of them, casting his glance between the two. "They say we are living in the crossroads of the two. And we must remember which we are on."

"That's good advice." Logan nodded.

"Do you say that because you know the future?" He held an awe in his eyes. "I heard them say that Lucas knew about the future. Are we really at the crossroads?"

Marie and Logan exchanged worried glances but the old man said something in a hushed tone and the boy ran on ahead.

"Too, Curious." The old man said in unpracticed English. "Too wanting." 

Logan nodded his understanding. He could hear the boy as he ran off. He seemed to be singing ". . .When you're strange, faces come out of the rain. . ."

The old man pointed. "There." 

Logan l\took metered steps across the red clay and stopped before a man who was squatting over a small fire. The man caught sight of Logan's boots and slowly lifted his eyes up the stranger's form.

"Ahhie!" He shook in shock.

Logan glanced to Marie where she was waiting a few feet away.

The man stood up slowly, numbly, maintaining a distance.

"Here! Here!" The man hit the backs of his own hands. "Show." He motioned to Logan. "Show." He said again.

And Logan popped out his claws.

The man dropped to one knee in shock, but recovered and rose. "Fa-ther." He said, then turned his eyes to Rogue. "Show." He said, tapping his forehead. "Show." He said again.

Rogue pulled out her French-braid and ponytail. She shook her hair free so that he might see her rare coloring.

The man breathed in deeply and his eyes widened. "Mother." He whispered and pointed at her.

"Lucas." He told them, shaking his head sadly, side to side. "Lucas gone." 


	30. Alone Ch30 Hope You Guess My Name

Chapter Thirty: Hope You Guess My Name

Ray rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Something about her was starting to induce a panic attack. Luke could induce them too. It was as though neither of them really belonged there. They were somehow out of place even among all the lost-soul-regulars, who didn't **_really_** belong here themselves.

And Ray seemed to recall something, like a fragment of a dream. Luke was standing before him, bloodied face, his hand outstretched, fingers spread. "Forget this. . ." Ray could hear his voice but his lips didn't move. He almost seemed to be on top of the memory, but it eluded him.

"I don't want to have to ask again, Ray." She said his name slowly and sweetly. "Sometimes,' She smiled "Knowing other peoples business, it helps you mind your own, you know?"

He suddenly looked afraid of her.

And Jubilee wouldn't have it. She looked away and crumpled to the bar while exhaling. "Forget it." She mumbled.

Ray licked his lips nervously. "No." He said slowly. "If you're being strait with me." He paused and swallowed.

He took two quick steps around the bar and sidled up close to her. "Have you ever heard the name a' James Howlett?"

Jubilee saw his eyes dart around the room and she followed their nervous course before responding.

"No." She spoke quietly and shook her head slightly.

Ray seemed noticeably pleased. "Good." He said. "No reason any decent folk should." He swallowed again.

"All anybody really knows about him is that he came a ridin' down the outlaw trail from a way up north. Had a wife, by the name a Rose I believe. She got in caught in the crossfire one day and she passed on." Ray crossed himself and cast a glance skyward. "God rest her soul." 

He shrugged sadly. "And he just went bad. Just like that. Climbed on a stolen horse and painted a bloody trail clear down to Mexico, and back." He dropped his head as he spoke "Killin' all sorts o' folk. The lawman, the drunkard, and his fellow outlaws." He nodded twice. "Some say it was his bullet that a got her and he ain't never been right since."

"What's this got to do with Lucas?" Jubilee crossed her arms. Ray was making her nervous.

"One night Luke was in here, drinking that dirt he likes."

Jubilee looked at him, lost as to the point.

"I say dirt." Ray shrugged "He crushes these, things, these buttons, off the cactus." He made a harsh face "In to his whiskey. He says it keeps other people from drinking what's his." Ray smiled. "But I got a powerful sick off just a taste one night." He seemed lost in thought. "Luke laughed a lot." He told her, returning to the moment.

"That night?" She prompted.

"Oh, right." He smiled. "Luke made friends with some of you-know-who's gang while they were in town."

He nodded twice and began trekking back around the bar.

"And that's it, he made friends?" She looked incredulous.

Ray beamed. "Well let me tell you this about Luke's friendship." He suddenly sounded like an authority on the subject. "It overflows in to your life." He nodded. "It's not just with you when he's there. You remember it. You keep it with you." He looked away as a customer approached with an outstretched coin in his hand. Ray took it and pulled out two cigars and a half a bottle of unlabeled brownish red liquid. He passed it along to the customer.

"I Kinda know what you mean." She said, feeling the distance and frenzied energy of his loss.

Ray shook his head. "No, I don't see it in your eyes yet." He paused. "You know what it is?" He said with a tone of realization. "He's always thinking of the big picture. And it's infectious."

Jubilee smiled and thought of Emma, slapped and swollen, guilt and anger flashing across her face_. Of course we're going to help them. . ._

"There it is." Ray said, looking in to her eyes. "You get it now."

Emma's voice trailed through her mind. _I come off like that because I used to be like that. ._ . And Jubilee did get it.

"His 'big picture' makes all the details small." She said.

"Sumtin' like that." He agreed.

"And this guy you don't like to talk about, he's in town now? He's around?" She was polite.

"No mam." He cast her a direct glance. "But he's expected."

She nodded twice, processing this new information. 

Ray let out a sigh. "I suppose by this time next year I'll be moving on." He smiled and nodded.

"Really?" Jubilee could see the appeal of the place. If you had no where else to be, why not be here?

"Shoot yeah." He got a slightly far away look in his eye. "This town has been dying slow for a few years now. Probably be gone in another ten. I'm gonna head on out west a bit further and buy me a chunk of land. Maybe run a trading post up in Nevada for a while."

And something occurred to Jubilee. Something too delicious not to attempt. "You know," She began "I've met some of the old money in Nevada." She lied gracefully. "And I can tell you one thing that I know that most other folks don't." 

Ray was solemn, and stared in rapt, strait-faced, attention.

"There's a town, its called Las Vegas." She glanced around the room and leaned in close, meeting his eyes. "There's going to be a steady stream of travelers passing by, and they're going to take steps to see that gambling remains legal forever." She nodded. "You open your trading post and put a few of those one armed bandits out front to tempt the passers-by. . ." She smiled wide and leaned in closer. 

"This is real big money I'm talking about here," She explained "And they're going to pull some strings, and eventually, the surrounding states will have gambling laws, and then, this Las Vegas of theirs, is going to become the gambling center of the west." She nodded twice and put a matchstick in her mouth to chew on.

"Are you for real?" He was searching her face for answers. "What kind of men can decide to alter the laws of different states like that?"

"The same kind that funded Lewis and Clark." She replied casually. "The kind that occasionally need hired talent. And just love to run their mouths, to each other, behind closed doors." She nodded knowingly, thinking of Trevor, her boastful and brief love interest from the XSE.

And he could see that she was speaking from experience.

"Well, I guess I've got a good bit of thinking to do." He told her flatly.

"You know, if you just kept buying land in the area until it was time to develop this gamblers paradise, I know that they'd just make you an obscenely large offer and take it all off your hands. Or your kids."

"Kids?" He looked confused.

"Big money can afford to wait. They do things like that, generation to generation." She shrugged, thinking of Xavier's inheritance and how he used it to influence and shape her life.

"I see." He said, stroking his mustache. "But it will always be legal, right, the gambling?" 

She nodded. "And if you had enough machines, just set out and collecting all that free money . . ."

"Plus running the post . . ." He reasoned out loud." I like this idea." He smiled at her. "This is good."

Jubilee leaned back and wiped her brow with her sleeve. The heat of the morning seemed truly oppressive when compared to the climate controlled station. She then went to take a drink from her bottle of wine only to find it was unexpectedly empty. And this fact alone became her first clue that she was in fact, very, very drunk.


	31. Alone Ch31 Naked Before the Universe

Chapter Thirty One: Naked Before the Universe

Emma sauntered through the halls of the station. The soft blue stand-by lights kept more than half of any room bathed in shadows. She stretched her almost bare arms high over her head, ever aware of how comfortable she was in the stations red, metal security bands.

She let her hips shift comfortably, side to side, as she strolled along the long, dark hall. She walked along the warm floor on the balls of her bare feet.

And she walked past the window, and saw the flickering planet below. This was the first view she had seen when standing up to discover she had been transported with Lucas to the station.

She stood with her feet apart, just the width of her shoulders, and stretched her arms over her back again. This time her back and neck cracked.

"Uhm." She closed her eyes and moaned in pleasure at the relieved tension of her now popped back.

She inhaled deeply and opened her eyes. This time, staring down telepathically as well as physically.

The view was vastly different when overlapped with the astral world.

A shining fluid ring of purple/blue plasma seemed to permeate the planet below. The 'lightning' that normally flashed across the world was in fact firing through the entire fluid plasma cloud, all at once. The stars seemed to become conjunction points of a starlight web that connected every star in the universe. 

And Emma understood that these webs were somehow related to how the stars touch each other with gravity.

The webs of starlight had aura's that glistened to fill the backdrop of space with an ever-changing tapestry of motion. And Emma understood that every color and every variance was representative of a facet of information about the space it inhabited at the moment.

Somewhere behind her, she became aware of a black hole, and it's effects of newly emerging stars who's light could not yet reach her from the distance in front of her. It lifted her hair and caressed her intimately all over her body. She could feel the super gravity of the hole working in co-operation with the explosive force of the would-be stars. One pushing, the other pulling, total strangers working in total co-operation for the benefit of all the celestial forces involved.

And she smiled, slowly, and slyly. _I bet the reason behind the whole of universal creation is simply this: It felt good at the time._

And Emma's view shifted. She saw now her astral reflection in the window. 

She was stunned and silent.

She had always been a slight and hazy green cloud on the astral level. Barely enough energy to distinguish behind the veil of physicality.

This was no longer that case.

Now she radiated a gold light with a soft blue tinge. The tint, she understood, was the effect of her time spent with Hank.

But not the golden light. She let her focus shift again and she could see that there was another body overlapping with hers, a divine and perfect form, hidden within. It was composed of moving rivers of golden cellular light.

The reflection smiled at her.

And Emma felt a slight shock, as she, herself, had not smiled.

"You have finally thrown it off." The reflection told her. "The demon who fed on you and distracted you with promises and hints of power." 

Emma felt as though she couldn't, or shouldn't, move.

"It is how they live." The vision sang gently. "In the place within the human heart that knows no time." She smiled and Emma felt a rush of energy pass through her body. "And that is where they must be fought." 

The divinity in the reflection spoke. "But you are now forever free of it my daughter. And experienced enough with dark enlightenment to understand the motivations of Evil."

"I don't want to understand the motivations of Evil." She told the spirit.

"It will serve you well in the trials to come." The spirit replied. "When evil reigns in this station you must play along. You must indulge yourself and wrap yourself in the trappings of Evil. You must use them against those you love."

Emma wanted to shake her head and dismiss this vision from her mind.

"Hear me." The spirit commanded "When the Keeper returns he will have become one with another. And it is through her that they will strike. He is compromised now where he was immune before." The perfect blue of her eyes then expanded to fill the entire eye socket. 

"If she takes him to bed first, all will be lost. The station and the multi-verse will fall before the demons."

"First?" Emma asked confused. "And what demons are you talking about?"

"Like the one that tempted you with the return of your beloved." The spirit seemed infinitely patient.

"That," She swallowed. "That was an accident. My token went off and . . ."

"What did you see instead of me?" the spirit asked. "What face did you reflect that day, at that moment?"

And Emma did remember, a reflection in a panel. It was a snake-like humanoid reflection.

"But you cast it off with the temptation." The spirit explained. "And the demons do not learn quickly if at all. They will not discover another weakness within you, although one exists."

"What can I do?" Emma realized she was shaking.

"Just remember my words." The spirit spoke, and began to recede. "And make sure to preserve the possibility."

"Preserve the possibility?" Emma felt any understanding slipping away. "Of what? How?"

"Play the role of Evil that you have outgrown, when the time comes. Indulge wildly and recklessly in all your pleasures. Convince them that you are with them."

"I understand." Emma said, regaining her composure.

"And bed the keeper before he beds his new love." It spoke as it vanished. "Or you shall never bear the true heir, who will defeat the demons and set free the whole of mankind. Instead it will be their child who inherits the station. Then all would be lost." The voice concluded in a whisper.

And the image was gone. 

Emma stood before the softly flickering Earth below.

How could _she_ do that to them_? If Lucas is with Jubilee . . ._

But she really didn't want to think about it. 

__

When evil reigns in this station you must play along . . .

Emma's mind rejected the thought. "Evil shouldn't touch a place like this. Ever."

__

You must indulge yourself and wrap yourself in the trappings of Evil . . .

"And lose myself forever in everything I am and hate." She whispered to herself.

__

You must use them against those you love . . .

And she saw them all in her minds eye, Lucas, Jubilee, Hank, (even) the Wolverine and Rogue that passed as Lucas' parents. And she was almost ashamed that she felt love, real love, for all of them. 

Emma wrapped her arms around herself, afraid of what was about to happen, afraid of what she might have to and even wanted to do. She swallowed and let her head hang low for a moment, while she tasted the salt-water tears she had just choked back. And suddenly, just for an instant, she was no longer 'nude' as she enjoyed. She was naked. 


	32. Alone Ch32 Lucas!

Bullets tore through Lucas as he ran wildly across the battlefield, but bullets no longer bothered him. He stay in the past had cured him of that. Arrows were another case however. Arrows hurt, and worse over, they tore flesh when they went in as well as when you pulled them out. Flesh that needed to be put back in place to heal properly.

Lucas jumped, dodging dead men, horses, and donkeys. One of the bullets that passed through him proceeded in to the lung of a nearby horse. The horse reared and whinnied in pain, throwing gold coins out of her saddlebags to form a hail of treasure across the landscape before falling backwards in to a death shudder. 

The guns were firing in a continuous thunder that surrounded him. He leapt forward and threw himself over the two Mexican men in front of him. A bullet smashed in to his skull just above his left eye and rang his head like a bell. "Stay down." He whispered to them.

Lucas pushed through the ringing in his head and put up a telekinetic shield around them. Many bullets were bouncing back the way they came, and many more were taking new directions as they ricocheted off. The occasional bullet actually stuck to the shield and began floating lazily about the surface above them.

"Come on." He said, lifting the first of the men to see the shield for the first time. His eyes widened with fear and confusion. A bullet bounced off the shield right before his eyes and he crossed himself as he watched it go.

The shield stretched as they stood up. They ran the thirty or so feet to the mouth of a cave, dragging the second Mexican man between them. He was barely breathing.

"Damn it!" Someone roared from the cliffs above. "What the hell was that?" He sounded pissed.

Lucas looked out of the cave. Several mules had been shot dead just outside. Probably to keep them from running off with the treasure they carried once the shooting had started.

"What the hell were you moving out there?" Lucas asked the man behind him, touching the mans mind so that it seemed that he was speaking Spanish.

"Our gold." The man replied. "We are bandits. Leaving Mexico." He replied through their translation. Lucas could see in his mind that they had looted an entire town while the townsfolk were off fighting a fire. He saw twenty-one pack animals, laden with gold, beginning the trip.

And he knew there were only six left standing outside.

"Damn." He thought silently. "Gold does make white men crazy." 

He reached out with his mind and felt the treasure, scattered around the canyon outside. And he began to retrieve it. His eyes hurt from concentration and he felt his nose begin to bleed. Defensive T.K. was one thing but offensive T.K. was quite another.

He began with the largest pieces of gold. A six-foot tall statue of the Virgin Mary and a life size baby Jesus, both solid gold, looted from a church. Whole saddle bags full of coins, jewels, and jewelry. Until he fell to one knee and had to stop. He could feel the others moving down the trail toward the canyon floor. Soon they would be cornered. And he would have to wait them out. It was best to save his strength for when he needed it.

"Don't come any closer!" Lucas yelled out the entrance. "I'll shoot anyone foolish enough to test me!" He told them. "Take your gold and go!"

He could feel the mind of the gang's leader as it sneered at him. The leader was talking low to his men.

Finally, someone spoke. "Who all's in there?" A voice called in.

"No one you want to know pal." Lucas drew his gun and cocked the trigger. The sound echoed and he heard the approaching footsteps stop.

Just then a clear bottle full of liquid with a flaming rag jammed in the top flew in, arcing towards Lucas' feet. He reached out with his mind and caught it easily, drawing out the rag and mentally tossing it back out the mouth of the cave.

"Thanks." Lucas called out. "We were powerful thirsty." He smiled at himself, taking a drink from the bottle. He was surprised to find it was vodka. He passed it to his Mexican friend, who held it to the lips of the other man. "Now take your worthless gold and go." He told them.

"Sounds like an Indian to me." The leader hissed to his men. "Did anyone get a look at him?" He asked and surveyed a set of shaking heads. "Alright. Gather all this stuff up. You two, set up here, and here, and shoot anything that moves near that cave."

The men began to scramble.

Lucas looked back at the men in the cave. As he did, the man on the floor shuddered and went slack in his friend's lap.

Lucas jumped at him and knocked the kneeling man back as he was beginning to cry. The body fell to the ground between them. Lucas brought his hands up over the corpse. At first, there seemed to be a twinkling effect, between his fingers, then it became brighter between his hands, and in an instant filled the small cave with rippling lights and a ripping, roaring sound like that of water as he held a great kinetic charge within his grasp. 

He had barely touched the dead mans chest with his fingertips when the current grabbed the man and drew him in to Lucas' touch then dropped him again. Lucas set a fierce look in his eye as his hands crackled to life again, this time carrying – encoded in the energy, the command to live.

And the body jumped again, this time, his eyes opening and a deep gasp as he drew his breath again and saw Lucas for the first time.

"Luke!' He smiled, confused "What are you doing here?"

"Saving your ass of course." He told his friend. "Just like in the bar." He was bridging the language gap again, almost unconsciously.

His friend smiled again at the memory and went to sit up. But his gut seized and he doubled over.

"Okay." Lucas took a deep breath and felt himself reaching, mentally, in to the wound. It was a bullet. It tore intestines and a lung. Fragments were everywhere.

Lucas made him lay down and be still. He grabbed the vodka off the floor of the cave and spilled it over his right hand. He threw his gun to the other man, who was terrified and crouched in the corner. "Watch the door." He tried to speak softly, to be reassuring, but the man was more afraid than mere words could comfort. Still, to his credit, he did as he was told.

Lucas took his sterile hand and felt the telekinesis respond to his will. It formed a current around his finger, flowing from one end to the other in a coil and turning his hand in to a telekinetic-magnet.

He then let the T.K field pour in to the wound until it touched every fragment of metal within. And as he slipped his hand in to his friends stomach, the field inflated, opening the wound. His hand began to tingle and all the metal fragments slowly back-tracked their trails to his waiting hand.

After a few attempts, he could detect no more fragments.

And so he turned his attention to the internal bleeding. His telekinetic field, still active within the wound, began to wrap itself _in to_ the damaged organs, but as it did, Lucas could feel his own organs, tearing their own set of corresponding wounds.

His gut twisted and he locked his joints in place to keep himself from falling. And he took a deep breath before he realized that his body was using itself as a template, having duplicated the wounds, in order to understand how to heal them telekinetically in the man before him.

And a moment later, he felt the mans organs and skin pinch uncomfortably closed as the telekinetic field absorbed in to his organs to act as a sealant until the rest of the healing could proceed on it's own.

Suddenly, a piercing headache ran through him from the base of his spine, up through the top of his head. He felt as though he was flying down a long tunnel and in to a bright, white light. He found himself in a garden.

"Hey Kid." A voice said from behind him. He turned slowly to see who it was. It was Wolverine.

"Hey." Lucas replied, unsure of which Wolverine he was looking at.

Wolvie smiled. "You know, you always surprise me." He put his hands in his pockets. "Like that time you got Cyke to take you to that strip club?" He chuckled. "Or when you took my old motorcycle and got Kitty to phase the two of you through that hospital wall? To get your mother?" He smiled and shook his head. "And now, this whole healing other people thing, I never saw it coming. I'm told singularities are like that." 

"You know me?" Lucas asked, still unsure.

He looked uneasy. "I'd like to think I do." He said softly and at last.

And a great look was exchanged between them, one that meant more than words could contain or convey. A deep awareness permeated the space between them. There was no need for anything so trivial as words.

Sometimes it's like that, between fathers and sons.

And while they both felt the need and the desire to stay there in that moment together, far more pressing and important was the pull of life from beyond.

"Go on." Wolverine told him as he felt himself receding. "I can wait."

And Lucas sat bolt upright off the floor with a gasp. The two Mexican men on either side of the door jumped. Night had fallen and a campfire, very obviously, burned just outside the cave on the canyon floor.


	33. Alone Ch33 Lucas?

Lucas crawled on his elbows over to the moth of the cave. He didn't want anyone to start shooting in, just because they saw him walking around.

"What's happening?" He asked his friend.

"We're trapped. Their leader took the horses and most of the treasure. He's going to come back with a wagon for the rest." He swallowed. "How are you?" He asked, not looking Lucas in the face.

"Better." Lucas told him. 

The man smiled. "You'd have to feel better." He told him "You were dead for hours."

"Didn't seem all that long from my end." Lucas told him. "Didn't mean to leave you in this mess."

"You came back." The man said, finding his humor. "That's what counts."

The other man looked at them as though they had lost their minds. And they both laughed at him.

Lucas closed his eyes. He knew from personal experience that laughter meant he was relaxed enough to sense things telepathically. He reached out with his mind and was surprised by what he found. There were only three men outside the cave, and no one else for miles. 

Lucas thought he sensed something familiar.

"Hey Dutch!" He hollered out of the cave and he heard guns cock and feet scramble. "Dutch!"

"Uh, yeah?" A hesitant voice replied.

"You got any of those store bought cigars on you boy?" Lucas prodded. 

The group whispered outside the cave. Finally Dutch replied "Luke? Luke Logan? You in there?"

"Sure am. Got grazed by a bullet. I was out for hours." He bluffed. 

"Prove it." He called back. "Come on out."

"You I trust Dutch. But you got other folk out there, now don't ya."

"Yeah." Dutch admitted slowly. "But we just finished dinner and we were getting a might drunk. We don't need a fight right now if you're willing come on out of there." Dutch swallowed. He knew that his boss would return – and that his boss already disliked Lucas – Even though they had never met.

"Well, I got two guys in here who took care of me while I was out. I cant just leave them in here you know."

"Leave them in there for a minute or two." Dutch called back. "Meet me by that first big rock on your . . ." He turned himself around, as though he were coming out of the cave. "Left. On your left."

"Okay." Luke called out. "I'm not carrying a gun." He said.

One of Dutch's men raised his gun slowly and Dutch reached out, and pushed the gun back down to face the ground. "No." He whispered.

Luke took three quick steps to the large rock on his left. He poked his head around and looked at Dutch. "Bring a cigar." He told him before ducking his head back behind the rock.

"Aw, shoot." Dutch smiled, seeing his friend's face clearly, he re-holstered his gun and walked calmly over to the large boulder and pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket.

"How'd you get mixed up in all this?" Dutch asked him, handing him the cigar and lighter.

"One of the guys inside is that little Mexican dude we met at Ray's. He was with that girl Tina." Lucas supplied.

"Jose?" Dutch asked. "Well shoot. I didn't realize."

"I'm not sure that's his name." Lucas smiled. 

"That don't matter none." Dutch assured him.

And then Dutch cocked his head to the side. "Say now, you guys wouldn't have a whole passel of gold in there, now would you?"

"Well," Lucas replied, letting go of a wide grin "You might say that." He shrugged.

Dutch planted his fists on his hips. "Well, I'll be."

"I tell you what." Lucas told him. "I'll give you half of everything we cant carry out with us." He told him. "We can dynamite the cave with our half still inside and you can bury yours somewhere else." He smiled. "You tell your boss that we started shooting and you tried to blow us up and the cave fell in."

"Well, that sounds about right." Dutch scratched his head. "We already think we might have been double crossed. Our shares sure ain't what they should be anyway." He looked up finally. "Yeah. Give me a few minutes to get the point across to these two yahoos back here." He gestured behind him with a thumb.

"Sure." Lucas shrugged. "I wasn't going anywhere."

Dutch smiled. "Don't worry about it. We can fix that soon enough."

"Good to hear." Lucas grinned, strolling back in to the cave.

The two men looked expectantly at him. "No worries." He said. "Now, help me divide some of this stuff up. We're buying our way out of here."

And the less familiar of the two men, the one who spent his day in confusion and shock, smiled wide. Finally, he felt, he understood what was going on.

Meanwhile, Wolverine and Rogue were riding south, toward what would one day be known as Skeleton Canyon.

"Are you worried?" Wolverine asked her.

"No. Not really." Marie shrugged. "At least, not about Lucas." 

"Who then?" Logan asked.

"Me." She admitted. "It's been a long time since I was this active Logan, since I tried to make mahself useful, or tried to make a difference."

"I know the feeling" He spoke softly to his saddle.

"And ah wonder if maybe I didn't pass it all along, in the blood, you know. Maybe I'm not up to this kind of life anymore." She shrugged.

"I think you're up to it just fine Rogue." He smiled at her. "It's just not what you want."

"You're right." She told him. 

"Do you know what you do want to do?" He asked.

She looked away, hesitantly. "I thought. . ." She said softly, embarrassed. "I thought I might write mah life's story." She said. "I think other girls, mutants I mean . . ."

Wolverine was nodding slowly as the idea became clear to him. "You could help a lot of people like that." He said softly and at last.

She lit up and almost glowed from the observation. "That's what Ah thought." She smiled at him.

"It's a good idea." He said. "You should do it."

She swallowed. "Do you think," She shrugged. "That maybe the Professor would let me hire a writer, a real writer, to help me get it all out?"

"I bet he would." Logan agreed. "I bet he'd really like the idea. We can ask him when we get back." He sensed that she felt uncomfortable asking for favors in 'his' world.

She smiled gratefully at him and idled her horse up next to his, to rest her head on his shoulder. Wolverine wrapped his arms around her. They both felt wonderful. It had been a long time since either had fallen in love.


End file.
